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!
Refresh your browser to catch a show in progress!
Visit our Facebook page or YouTube channel!
But nothing beats being in the room with the music & the musicians!
It’s the new thing at Bird & Beckett! Â May is the trial run, then we lay low in June and start in earnest in July… Â Catch dinner some Saturday at one of the neighborhood’s great restaurants, then come on up to Jazz Club for a couple sets of fantastic jazz ’til 11 p.m The second Saturday night of each month Grant Levin will be bringing in the finest jazz players working the Bay Area scene, and Michael Parsons will follow suit on the fourth Saturday night. Â Grant and Michael both have quickly gained respect as among the very top echelon of players around town. Our series aims to shine a bright light on the many fine musicians who are taking the Bay Area jazz scene to new heights. Want to find out what it’s about? Â May 10th, we’ll feature saxophonist Noel Jewkes — a San Francisco jazz legend, with pianist…
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Chuck Peterson and Howard Dudune, reeds; Glen Deardorff, guitar; Dean Reilly, bass and Tony Johnson, drums, make up the regular fourth Friday band at Bird & Beckett, carrying on a long tradition of weekly jazz parties in Glen Park. Â No cover charge, but do bring some money for the musicians anyway! Â Supporting live jazz in San Francisco is money well spent!
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Author John Goodman will speak at Bird & Beckett the evening of May 21st on the man, Charles Mingus, and the book, Mingus Speaks: Interviews with Charles Mingus, 1972-1974 (John Goodman, author; Sy Johnson, photographer; University of California Press, 2013). From John Goodman’s website, www.mingusspeaks.com:  What is this thing called Mingus? Some have heard the name, a few know his music and maybe a story or two. But most people don’t know who he really was or how he came to be one of the master players and composers in jazz. MINGUS SPEAKS is a book of extended interviews which allowed the man to explain himself. He was assisted by me, the interviewer, and by a number of close associates who commented on aspects of his life, behavior and music. We sat in bars and restaurants in Philadelphia and New York, in his apartment and Sue’s {Sue Mingus]. I did over 20…
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Live recording:  Sterling Bunnell will read his long-form poem, “Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale Completed.”  Bunnell retired from a long career in psychiatry some time ago, during which he was particularly known for his 1960s exploration of the use of hallucinogenic drugs in treatment regimens; he’s credited with introducing the first living strain of Salvia divinorum, Diviner’s Sage, to the United States, on his return from a 1962 trip in the company of Michael McClure to Sierra Mazateca.  Bunnell is highly regarded as well for his investigations of ecological history and prospects and for his wide ranging philosophical thought. His recent series of talks at the Humanist Hall in Oakland have been providing grist for the mill and food for thought to many, just a current manifestation of his continuing consideration of the continuum. An open mic, conducted by Sterling’s long-time friend, student and colleague, Jerry Ferraz, follows.  All welcome.
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Trombonist Charles Hamilton directed the Berkeley High jazz program for three decades, training the likes of Joshua Redman, Benny Green, Josh Jones and Peter Apfelbaum — all players who have gone on to world renown. Â Born in San Francisco in the 1940s, Charles grew up in Louisiana, touring the region on trumpet with an R&B band while still in high school. Â In 1965, he came back to study music at SFSU, switching to trombone, and taking teaching jobs in the Berkeley schools upon graduation. Â In 1981, he hired on as band director at Berkeley High, and the rest is history. Â Charles has often played at Bird & Beckett in the past, and we’re looking forward to him bringing in a trio that includes two top players with long, stellar track records on the local and national scene. Guitarist Calvin Keys has a dozen records to his credit as leader, and…
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Latif Harris has contributed to the San Francisco/North Beach literary scene since 1959. In addition to his publications of poetry, articles, reviews and various anthologies, Latif has published eleven books of poetry, including Bodhisattva’s Busted Truth. Latif’s skill, energy and devotion to the work is evidenced in the crucial BEATITUDE GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY 1959-2009, co-edited by Latif with Neeli Cherkovski, and published and distributed by Latif.  This is an unequaled anthology of Beat literature – a classic work of contemporary poetry. Latif is currently working on a large “Autobiopoetic†collection of poems covering 50 years of his work.  His reading today, and a second reading on Sunday, June 2nd will include material from his memoirs, old and new poems, and many good humored anecdotes revealing the many dimensions of his life in poetry.
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Jazz to stretch your mind… Hamir Atwal, drums and Michael Coleman, piano. Both players have picked up a lot of playing time on the progressive edge of the Bay Area jazz landscape, as well as handling the straight ahead traditions with skill born of experience and training — at Oberlin for Michael and at Berklee School of Music for Hamir.
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Scott Foster has another engagement this week… he’ll be back with a great band on the third Friday in June. Tonight:  The Harvey Robb Quartet, with Grant Levin, piano; Ollie Dudek, bass; and Danny Spencer, drums. Reed player Harvey Robb has deep Detroit roots — where he grew up in the late 1950s sneaking into the jazz clubs & more legitimately gaining access to other venues to breathe the air filled with the cascading music of the likes of Yusef Lateef, Barry Harris and Elvin Jones.  These jazz legends, along with Curtis Fuller, Pepper Adams, Doug Watkins, Sir Roland Hanna and many others, were able to perfect their art in an industrial city where people headed for the late shift or coming off the swing shift could make the cash registers ring all night long — just the excuse the club owners needed to justify late and long hours filled with music. Harvey came out to California in the…
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Carlos Suarez considers the work of the great writer, whose passing has us so many of us considering the time we first encountered One Hundred Years of Solitude.
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Jerry Ferraz is known widely for his link to the bardic tradition, with his small guitar and wandering ways and his long poetic narratives in song that roll out without recourse to the page.  Unfettered to contemporary preoccupations, they can be at the same instant timely in the most uncanny of ways.  Certainly, The Golden Key is among his most fascinating tales, a thing to be marveled at, to be taken in and savored.  Live recording tonight! A poets’ open mic follows, as it does every 1st & 3rd Monday at Bird & Beckett. Next session, May 19th, Jerry’s good friend and mentor, the philosopher/psychologist Sterling Bunnell will deliver his long-form narrative, Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale Completed.  Read more on both Jerry and Sterling here.
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Two Franks — drummer Jon and trumpeter Noah — bookend a group that includes guitarist Jordan Samuels, pianist Dave Gibbons and bassist Rob Woodcock this Sunday for our “which way west?” concert. This Sunday, nestled into two sets of standards, modern jazz masterpieces and new compositions, the quintet will treat us to a sequence summoning the spirit of the Miles Davis’ classic post-bop “Miles Smiles” sessions of 1966. Those sessions, with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams alongside Miles, produced key quintet recordings of Shorter’s “Footprints” and “Dolores” and Eddie Harris’s “Freedom Jazz Dance.” Drummer and band leader Jon Frank graduated from SFSU with a BA in music education and has been orchestra director at Hoover Middle School for more than 20 years. Â All along the way, he’s gigged on jazz dates and has led his own small combos, including this one. Â He’s been heard at…
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Riding the backdraft of that big ol’ semi known as California Bookstore Day, Bird & Beckett will be proudly displaying (and selling) some eyepopping examples of what some particularly lovely publishers have to offer. Â There will be cookies & juice & discounts too! Â Do drop in!
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On the first Friday of each month, our weekly jazz in the bookshop series features Don Prell’s Seabop Ensemble. Bassist Prell is a veteran of the 1950s LA-based Bud Shank Quartet and 30 years with the San Francisco Symphony. He’s a fiercely avid jazz player, willing to play anywhere and any time and has been a key to keeping our weekly jazz series going these many years. SeaBop is the ensemble crafted for the date by Don Prell, drawing on some of the best jazz musicians in the Bay Area. That said, the group has settled into a vital groove with reed player Jerry Logas and pianist Michael Parsons, lately augmented by Vinnie Rodriguez on drums.
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Each month, Walker Brents III spins a tale investigating the work of a poet, a philosopher, perhaps a bit of mythology or a vast national epic — or some other subject that holds a fascination for the incurably curious among us. Today, as the annual frolic known as the Glen Park Festival unfolds just down the block, Walker will muse on the Bhagavad Gita, a tale with uncountable implications, found within the Mahabarata, India’s great religio-mythological epic.
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Nilsson Schmilsson! Wrap up your Glen Park Festival outing with this romp deep into the catalog of famed-among-many-of-us American pop songwriter Harry Nilsson. Â The addled brainchild, or rather the rational brainchild of delightfully addled improvisors Christopher Gray, Joshua Raoul Brody and their stalwart cohorts, this event is the reprise & elaboration of a memorable evening they staged here at Bird & Beckett a few years back. Expect the unexpected, but warmly familiar work of a favorite American eccentric.
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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." We've been doing that very thing for more than a decade and a half, 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 through our fiscal sponsor, Jazz in the Neighborhood.
Click on "donate" in the navigation bar above. Better yet, send or drop off a check made out to our fiscal sponsor, Jazz in the Neighborhood, with BBCLP in the memo line. Our mailing address is:
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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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
