653 Chenery Street
in San Francisco's Glen Park neighborhood
1-415-586-3733
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Peter Cherches is the author of Lift Your Right Arm (Pelekinesis, 2013) and two previous volumes of short prose, Condensed Book and Between a Dream and a Cup of Coffee. His work has appeared in the anthologies Poetry 180 and Up Is Up, But So Is Down: New York’s Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992. His fiction and other short prose work has been featured in a wide range of magazines and journals, including Harper’s, Semiotext(e), Transatlantic Review, Fiction International, North American Review, Fence and Bomb. Cherches was active, on page and on stage, in the raucous and unpredictable literary, music and performance scenes of downtown Manhattan in the 1980s. Sonorexia, the avant-vaudeville music/performance group he co-led with Elliott Sharp, appeared at such legendary venues as The Mudd Club and CBGB. Cherches also writes about food and music and is a two-time recipient of New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships in…
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Once a month — except during those summer wanderings when he rambles the west to make sure the roads still lead on…that annual meander with the lovely Joyce that keeps him rooted in the American grain — Walker Brents III dips deep into a ten gallon hat brimming with his thoughts on the vast implications of history, myth and the cogitating tendency we humans can’t ever quite escape, whether from the north, south, east or west… So, here it is, late August, no, now it’s late September, and lo! Walker has a few more things to say, sparked particularly by those long, long moments stretching out across the seemingly infinite flatlands that comprise the llano estacado, an American marvel so big and wide it’d likely make you feel like a mite on the back of a big ol’ Texas longhorn… Welcome back, again, Walker…
Read MoreFivePlay Jazz – featuring Dave Tidball, reeds; Tony Corman, guitar; Laura Klein, piano; Paul Smith, bass; and Alan Hall, drums – celebrates the release of their new CD, “Five and More.” – Melodic Modern Jazz… About the players: Dave Tidball (woodwinds/composer): Born in Cardiff, Wales, Dave played and recorded in London with Turning Point. Upon moving to Boston, MA, he formed the group Minotaur, which featured his own compositions. Since relocating to the Bay Area, he has played and recorded with Triceratops, Three Tenors No Opera, the great vocalist Paula West, and his own trio, Threedom. Dave teaches music in the Oakland public schools and has a busy freelance playing schedule. Tony Corman (guitar/composer): Tony comes from the Boston area. He graduated from the Berklee College of Music with a B.A. in saxophone performance. He appeared and recorded with Full Faith and Credit big band, the Contemporary Jazz Orchestra,…
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Monday, October 5th – 7 to 9 pm
POETS! Dan Richman featured,
followed by an open mic
Jerry Ferraz hosts
Dan Richman returns with poems in hand. He read on our first bill of poets back in 1999 or so, and has continued to write all along, taking in the terrain on which San Francisco is built, the birds circling in the skies above, the people who inhabit it, going about their business day to day. An hour in his company is time well spent. Bring your own work to read in the open mic, if you care to. Jerry Ferraz, who m.c.’s our twice monthly poetry series, was a co-reader with Dan on that first reading back when the store was just getting started. All along, Jerry has been the continuous element in our understanding of what it is to be a poet in San Francisco.
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 A Benefit Performance to raise funds for visiting playwright Ranjon Ghosal The Classical Music Traditions of South India and North India intertwine with American Jazz in an historic first encounter between renowned musicians Prasant Radhakrishnan and George Brooks. Carnatic/Jazz Saxophonist Prasant Radhakrishnan Hindustani/Jazz Saxophonist George Brooks bassist Bishu Chatterjee tabla player Vishal Nagar and jazz drummer Rusty Aceves  ~ tickets for the September 24 benefit are available in advance at the bookshop ~ Ranjon Ghoshal will be coming to the Bay Area in October from his home in Bangalore, in the South Indian state of Karnataka, to perform his play “Crisis of Civilisation: A Journey With Tagore”  — first, as an excerpt on a program that will be presented on Sunday, October 13 by Bird & Beckett at San Francisco’s Vogue Theatre as part of the annual Litquake festival; and subsequently, at full-length at an East Bay venue and…
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Welcome to the wonderful world of public education, as seen through the eyes of seasoned substitute teacher, Horton Hagardy. It’s a time you might recall with great fondness if you were a student a day to escape the oppressive existence of your everyday tormentors. If you’re a substitute, however, these dark, funny, and often poignant stories, take you to a very real place. In Emil DeAndreis’s new book, Beyond Folly, we are on the front lines of the education system, in the trenches, so to speak, of what it feels like to face the everyday challenges of being a teacher on call. These thoughtful and insightful linked-together tales give the reader a behind-the-scenes peek into the life and mind of a substitute teacher, an isolated, underpaid, and underappreciated professional,
Read MoreThe Albatross Quartet, featuring Dave Tidball, clarinet, bass clarinet; Jim Dukey, clarinet, bass clarinet; Dick Mathias, clarinet, bass clarinet; and Charlie Keagle, clarinet, present a unique fusion of chamber music and jazz improvisation for clarinets and bass clarinets featuring original compositions and arrangements by members of the group and others.
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Sonoma County Poet Laureate Bill Vartnaw and Sonoma County Poet Laureate emeritus Gwynn O’Gara are joined by poet QR Hand and the rest of WordWind Chorus (poet Brian Auerbach & saxophonist Lewis Jordan). QR will read separately as well as performing with WordWind. Of Q. R. Hand, the late, lamented Reginald Lockett (a founding member of the jazz/poetry ensemble WordWind Chorus), once said, “Q.R. Hand’s poetry traverses the terrain of form, music, and language. This is an inspired, well crafted poetry that is political in intent and spirited in execution and defies any comparison to any literary precursors or contemporary schools of thought. Q.R. Hand is an entity unto himself; a true visionary walks among us.” Read more about Q.R. here. WordWind Chorus began a couple of decades ago, with Q.R., Brian and Lewis and co-founder, the late and much missed Reginald Lockett, performing poetry by the various members in highly…
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Al Young was the California Poet Laureate from 2005-2008, a high point in a towering career that began in the late 1960s with novels, poetry collections and more, through the 1970s on into the present… novels that include Who is Angelina? and Sitting Pretty, poetry collections including Dancing and The Sound of Dreams Remembered, books on music like Mingus Mingus and Kinds of Blue… Although Al’s roots are in the rural south, born on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi in 1939, and in Detroit, he’s been in California since 1961 when he first came out to the Bay Area, and he has long been an important figure in the West Coast literary world. Throughout his career, he’s been indefatigable and invaluable, and his work has touched tens of thousands of readers. Jeanne Powell is a published poet and essayist. Her books in print are MY OWN SILENCE and WORD DANCING (new edition…
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OUT-there poetry & OUT-there jazz: Poets Clark Coolidge, Garrett Caples, and Andrew Joron (Caples and Joron are also the editors of the book), with bibliographer Steven Fama, plus music from OUROBOROS (Sheldon Brown & Joseph Noble, reeds; Andrew Joron, theremin; Clark Coolidge, drums) The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia represents the lifework of the most visionary poet of the American postwar generation. Philip Lamantia (1927-2005) played a major role in shaping the poetics of both the Beat and the Surrealist movements in the United States. First mentored by the San Francisco poet Kenneth Rexroth, the teenage Lamantia also came to the attention of the French Surrealist leader Andre Breton, who, after reading Lamantia’s youthful work, hailed him as a “voice that rises once in a hundred years.” Later, Lamantia went “on the road” with Jack Kerouac and shared the stage with Allen Ginsberg at the famous Six Gallery reading in San…
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Pianist and vocalist Frank Jackson has been an important part of the San Francisco jazz scene since the early 1950s if not earlier… having moved out from Texas with his family in 1942. Today, he’s respected as a swinging elder statesman of the music and he’s going strong. Read up on him at this link: AllMusic: Frank Jackson. On reeds, we’ll have the legendary musician’s musician Noel Jewkes — a towering figure on the local scene for decades. Known in some quarters as Dr. Legato, Noel is heir to a lovely, swinging style that many associate in their minds with the great Lester Young, though he’s fully his own man — and a terrific composer and pianist in addition to his considerable skills on saxophone and clarinet. Leader John Clark on bass and drummer Rob Gibson provide the structure for this consummate quartet date.
Read MoreThis group meets the 2nd Thursday of each month to consider books on current issues or with some historical relevance to what’s going on now… This month’s selection is The Price of Inequality by Joseph Stiglitz. Next month (October 10), the group will discuss a pair of unpublished manuscripts by Greg Harmon, “Commentaries from a Correspondence on Locke and Property” and “Locke on Property.” All welcome! ______________________________________ Allegra Fortunati, a long-time participant in this book group, wrote the following review of the Stiglitz’s Price of Inequality: According to Wikipedia, economics as “dismal science†was coined in the 19th Century by historian Thomas Carlyle in response to Malthus’ predictions of starvation due to projected population growth exceeding the increase in the food supply. Carlyle is quoted as saying “the controversies on Malthus … are indeed sufficiently mournful. Dreary, stolid, dismal, without hope for this world or the next ….â€Â Reading Stiglitz’s The…
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The piano wonder from down under…a Bird & Beckett favorite from three previous tours through our fair city…is squeezing in an hour’s show for you before making his way to the airport and thence to New Orleans, Alabama, etc., etc… Don’t miss this chance to hear some new material & some old favorites by a wonderful piano player, singer, songwriter and composer. Live recording today for KCSM’s “In the Moment” (Thursdays at 9pm) on 91.1 fm.
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which way west? Sunday concert series. All ages welcome! No cover charge, but your generous donations make it possible for us to pay the musicians. Sunday, September 8th – 4:30-6:30 pm: The Betty Shaw Quartet, with Ian Carey (trumpet), Robb Fisher (bass) & Ron Marabuto, drums. Live recording today for KCSM 91.1 FM’s “In the Moment” by Jim Bennett A local legend, pianist Betty Shaw is known for a love & deep understanding of jazz that’s led her to play anywhere, anytime, with top flight collaborators — with a commitment born of nothing so much as pure joy in the music. She first learned the instrument as a depression-era kid, born in Albuquerque and raised through the teen years around Denver, lucky to have a piano to play on. Eventually, the family moved to the L.A. area, and once she reached adulthood, the need to make a living took her away from the music for what seemed to her a…
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Six writers converge from various points on the West Coast and New York City for an afternoon of readings hosted by Laura Ruberto, co-chair of the Berkeley City College Department of Arts and Culture. On hand for the afternoon will be Giovanna Capone (Oakland); Jennifer Lagier Fellguth (Santa Cruz); Paul Fericano (Santa Barbara); George Guida (New York City) ; Tommi Avicolli Mecca (San Francisco); and James Tracy (San Francisco). These writers share an Italian-American background that has had a hand in shaping their work.  Several have devoted their attention largely to poetry, plays and fiction, while Avicolli Mecca, Tracy and Fericano have long track records as activists as well, their writing and agitating going hand in hand…
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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.
Due to lapses in tax filings during and post-pandemic, the BBCLP's status as a registered nonprofit was suspended at the beginning of April 2024 while we reapply, which is expected to take about six months. Donations made after April 1st will not be tax-deductible until nonprofit status is restored.
However, we continue to present a full slate of programming live music and poetry, and producing literary chapbooks, and we seek and welcome your continued financial support in the interim. If a tax-deduction is not a major reason for your support to date, we hope you'll continue to ride with us while we navigate these next several months.
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Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project
653 Chenery Street
San Francisco, CA 94131
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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
