653 Chenery Street
in San Francisco's Glen Park neighborhood
1-415-586-3733
[email protected]
Open to walk-in trade and browsing
Tuesday to Sunday
noon to six
Live Streams every weekend!
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But nothing beats being in the room with the music & the musicians!
Two sets of straight ahead jazz, blues, Brazilian and Afro-Cuban tunes performed by a terrific sextet led by drummer Steve Nelson, with his long-time musical collaborator Sharman Duran on piano and vocals. The sextet will cover ground from Cole Porter to Jobim to Monk and much more.  Though mainly rooted in the jazz, The Steve Nelson Sextet can take a standard and rearrange it into their own unique musical styling. And besides classic jazz standards, you’ll likely hear James Taylor, Joni Mitchell or even the Beatles arranged in a nice Latin or funk style. Though the sextet is the project of drummer Steve Nelson, the ensemble’s unique musical mix would not be possible without the vocal and piano stylings of his long-time musical associate Sharman Duran. Along with vocalist/flautist Saskia, the sextet features tenor saxophonist Jim Grantham, vibraphonist Dan Neville and bassist Bill Lanphier.
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Bootstrap Press’s Derek Fenner presents poet Tongo Eisen-Martin with his new book, someone’s dead already. About the book: “Eisen-Martin’s syntax lands somewhere between Sphinx and Thelonious…through poem he makes spare, efficient, wild-eyed jazz…rubs mud and accountability into the pores of the zeros and ones in the glass and steel city. Throughout SOMEONE’S DEAD ALREADY, I return to the wonder of the writer’s economy of language, how deftly the words infuse their amulet casings with blood temperature at the edge of boiling. This work is as hungry as revolution, a necessary, deadly still in these shifting times…”—Marc Bamuthi Joseph About the author: Born in San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin is a movement worker, educator, and poet who has organized against mass incarceration and extra-judicial killing of Black people throughout the United States. He has educated in detention centers from New York’s Rikers Island to California’s San Quentin State Prison. His work in…
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Smith Dobson, a formidable young tenor sax player, leads off our Saturday “jazz club” series each month, on the first Saturday of the month. Tonight he has a stellar rhythm section — Keith Saunders on piano Eric Markowitz on bass Tony Johnson on drums. V’s Quartet… generations in the making, now!
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We’ll call this booking the after-party for the annual Glen Park Festival, which will be wrapping up just as guitarist Josh Workman is taking the stage at Bird & Beckett. Josh is bringing in a tight quartet featuring David Udolf on piano; Ravi Abcarian on bass and Bryan Bowman on drums, to cover some of Workman’s originals, both from his debut CD and ones he’s working on for the next release, mixed in with an exciting and eclectic mix of jazz, Latin, and Brazilian compositions from the past 100 years. Josh has toured and recorded with a broad variety of artists, including the likes of jazz greats Jon Hendricks, Benny Green, Noel Jewkes, Larry Vuckovich and the Jazz Passengers; gypsy jazz favorites The Hot Club of San Francisco; swing specialists Indigo Swing and Brian Setzer, punk diva Debbie Harry, and even Wonder Woman herself, Lynda Carter.  His playing and compositions have…
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Beginning in 1933, in Ascona, Switzerland, there gathered annually an intellectual conclave of Jungians and Pythagoreans, philosophers and theologians, orientalists and historians of religions, ethnologists, Indologists, Islamists, Egyptologists, mythologists and scientists, to present learned and imaginative papers, interact with one another, enjoy the invigorating setting and relax in the hospitality in those early years of a singular woman, Olga Froebe.  A “jahrbook” gathering the papers presented at the conference was published for each one, and the connections and conversations that transpired took on lives of their own. This Sunday, at 2:30 pm, Walker Brents will delve into the history and richness that developed at  this pinnacle of intellectual interchange.  Each month, except when he goes wandering for the summer, he spins his thoughts and insights on a range of topics mythological, poetic and otherwise, and leaves his listeners intrigued, edified and a bit dazzled…
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Alto player Terrance Tony, until his untimely death of pneumonia on April 7th, led our fourth Saturday jazz club dates with fire coming from deep experience in the music. He came of age as a musician in Dallas and Houston, spending precious time on the bandstand learning his trade from such legendary Texas tenor players as Illinois Jacquet and Arnett Cobb. Terrance later toured with Art Blakey, an indication of the levels his study of jazz elevated him to. Â Read a bit more here at an earlier post on our site. Drummer Vinnie Rodriguez, who anchored Terrance’s Saturday night quartets here at Bird & Beckett since last September, has assembled a quintet featuring alto player Jesse Levit to pay tribute to Terrance on what would have been Terrance’s gig, Saturday, April 25th from 8-11 pm. They’ll burn through some of the tunes that Terrance could be relied on to call…
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In Avery Burns’ Murmurations Reading Series, the French poet Franck André Jamme, with translator Norma Cole, will read from his new book, To The Secret (La Presse, 2015).  In addition, poet John Sakkis celebrates his excellent new book, The Islands (Night Boat, 2014). Franck André Jamme has published fifteen books of poems and fragments since 1981, as well as numerous illustrated books (with Jaume Plensa, James Brown, Zao Wou Ki, Marc Couturier, Suzan Frecon, Yang Jie Chang, Olivier Debre, Acharya Vyakul, Philippe Favier). He has been praised by Edmond Jabes, Henri Michaux and René Char (whose Complete Works he has edited in La Pléiade), and has been translated by John Ashbery. He has published numerous works in the United States, including Moon Wood (Selavy Press, 2000); Extracts from the Life of a Beetle (Black Square, 2000); The Recitation of Forgetting (Black Square, 2003); Another Silent Attack Black Square/Brooklyn Rail, 2006); New Exercises (Wave Books,…
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A classic piano trio date. Pianist Denny Berthiaume, bassist Chuck Bennett and drummer Curt Moore. Three veterans of the Bay Area jazz scene who have been plying these waters together for many years, all the while pursuing countless other musical pursuits & associations, with artists ranging from (Berthiaume) Bobby McFerrin to Rosemary Clooney to Ed Thigpen – who drummed for Oscar Peterson & Dr. Billy Taylor; from (Bennett) Art Pepper to the Beach Boys; and from (Moore) Count Basie to Pete Escovedo to the Turtle Island String Quartet. Â You won’t regret an afternoon spent in the company of these musicians. Â Do come!
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Dave is at the core of the city we love. One of the  many reasons there’s still hope for this city.* Come hear his freewheeling rap, his deep grooving philosophy of love and peace. Don’t panic, it’s organic. Learn to love, love to learn, never ends. * (Thanks David Blasevich for that catchphrase, used to describe a man who’s a font of cosmically meaningful catchphrases.)
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Michael Marcus, reeds Heshima Mark Williams, bass Art “Sharky” Lewis, drums celebrate three local legends Bishop Norman Williams   •   B.J. Papa   •   Vince Wallace Saturday, April 18th from 8 to 11 pm – $10 cover Painting by Lewis Bangham – www.lbangham.com
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Guitarist Jim Hall, pianist Herbie Nichols, tenor player Joe Henderson, pianist Bill Evans… these and numerous other jazz artists assembled trios that beguiled and informed the ears of countless jazz cognoscenti and bystanders caught in the beauty of the moment. You don’t have to be steeped in the history of jazz to recognize how beautiful the jazz trio can be, how richly it can create a musical soundscape in your head… Scott Foster, Sam Bevan and Bryan Bowman will take you there this evening, if only you’ll come along for the ride, with an open mind and the ears to hear. Leave your troubles at the doorstep and you chatter at the curb, and enjoy the ride. Bring $10 for the band, wouldya? Â They do it for love, but they gotta eat.
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“Red Poet,” a film about Jack Hirschman, will be screened Thursday, April 16th at Bird & Beckett, with the director and the poet present. Red Poet is Jack Hirschman!  For five years, filmmaker Matthew Furey followed the San Francisco Poet Laureate to café and art gallery, to  poetry readings in Los Angeles and Venice, Italy…  North Beach is there in its post-Beat glory—its cafes, its single room occupancy hotels, its bohemian life. The resulting film is a skillful weave of the person and the place, the past and the present—told through the voice of a quintessential North Beach poet.  Featuring Amber Tamblyn, Dean Stockwell. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, David Meltzer and other West Coast literati, the film salutes an extraordinary life lived through the poem. April is National Poetry Month.  No better way to celebrate than to come to Bird & Beckett on Thursday, April 16th to spend time in the company…
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Raise a glass with us to Samuel Beckett, with our fine friends from PUS Theatre Company, Beckett interpreters extraordinaire and good friends of the enterprise we lovingly call “Bird & Beckett.” Sam claimed to be born on Good Friday, April 13th, but averred he remembered life in the womb, so we’re not adverse to celebrating early.  Besides, his birth certificate states May 13th as his birthday.  So whether we’re observing a day early, or a day-and-a-month, no matter!  Celebrate, we shall.  Please join us! Below, find pics of Scott Baker, co-founder of PUS, which got its start in Chicago pubs and odd spaces and quickly gained acclaim as that  most theatrical city’s sweetest, quirkiest and liveliest interpreter of old Sam’s odd plays!  When Scott and Val Fachman — a full on partner in PUS and with Scott in the parenting of sweet Ella — moved to the neighborhood back in…
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Mark Levine wrote the book on jazz piano… specifically, The Jazz Piano Book (Sher Music, 2005 — but originally published in 1989), and has been instrumental in the education of many thousands of jazz pianists… He himself studied in Boston and New York with legendary figures Hal Overton, Herb Pomeroy and Jaki Byard. Along the way, Mark has shared the bandstand and recording studio with, among others, Woody Shaw, Bobby Hutcherson, Freddie Hubbard, Wallace Roney, Tito Puente, Milt Jackson, James Moody, Art Farmer, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Fortune, Eddie Harris, Stefon Harris, Eddie Henderson, Conrad Herwig, Clark Terry, Ingrid Jensen, Charlie Rouse, Bobby Watson, Chet Baker, Philip Harper, Mark Murphy, Art Pepper, Julian Priester, Bobby Shew, Steve Turre, Madeline Eastman, Enrique Pla and Poncho Sanchez… with particularly fruitful and intense extended stints with trumpeter Blue Mitchell and sax giants Joe Henderson, Harold Land and Dave Liebman, and with with latin jazz…
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Pianist Grant Levin leads a quartet every 2nd Saturday in our “jazz club” series– 8-11 pm, “when lights are low…” Tonight, Grant will be featuring reed player Noel Jewkes, with the able rhythm section assistance of Joe McKinley on bass and Rick Rivera on drums. Classic small group jazz in an intimate venue where every note and phrase rings marvelously clear. photo by Wylie Maercklein Noel Jewkes is a jazz veteran known to many in the younger set from his work with Lavay Smith. He was born in Utah in 1940 and migrated to San Francisco as an adult to become one of the most revered local masters of the jazz saxophone, but only after playing for years, from the age of 12, in the family swing orchestra headed by his mother and father. The Jewkes Orchestra traveled widely in the region, delivering a swinging and danceable beat to audiences…
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Your donation to the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project helps us pay for a multitude of operating expenses necessary to present, promote and preserve local music, poetry, and more.
Help us keep the arts alive and thriving!
The Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project was created in 2007 "to present, document and archive the creative work of significant living writers and musicians in the San Francisco Bay Area, for a neighborhood audience and future generations," continuing the work we began when the store was established in 1999.
We continue to present a full slate of programming of live music and poetry readings, and produce a literary journal and poetry chapbooks, and we seek and welcome your continued financial support by way of donations.
Click on "donate" in the navigation bar above. Better yet, make a check out to the “Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project” and drop it off or mail it to:
Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project
653 Chenery Street
San Francisco, CA 94131
Call us at (415) 586-3733 to find out how else you might lend your support.
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We're immensely appreciative of Jazz in the Neighborhood for having stepped in as our temporary fiscal sponsor for a few months, while we straightened out some paperwork to get nonprofit status restored to the BBCLP. We're happy to say that's been done, and all past, present, and future donations made directly to the BBCLP are fully tax-deductible!
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The Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project
Our events are put on under the umbrella of the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project (the "BBCLP"). That's how we fund our ambitious schedule of 300 or so concerts and literary events every year.
The BBCLP is a [Read More ]
The Independent Musicians Alliance
Gigging musicians! You have nothing to lose but your lack of a collective voice to achieve fair wages for your work!
The IMA can be a conduit for you, if you join in to make it work.
https://www.independentmusiciansalliance.org/
Read more here - Andy Gilbert's Feb 25 article about the IMA from KQED's site
