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!
Forum is the student-run literary journal put out twice a year by students at City College of San Francisco. Â Join us for a party and reading to celebrate the launch of the spring 2015 issue, which features the work of dozens of fiction writers, essayists, poets and visual artists. Dedicated to providing a platform for the contemporary, urban voices of CCSF, Forum collects, edits and publishes quality works of literature and the visual arts as produced by the CCSF family. Publication is open to any who have ever been involved with the school, whether as student, educator or employee. Â Many fine creative artists have been associated with CCSF through the years, and many have had work in Forum since its founding in 1937. Â Here’s to a long, long run for a fine publication and a crucial institution!
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Come out this first Tuesday, February 3rd 7–9pm for the grand opening of Gallery Ex Libris (tucked inside Bird & Beckett), exhibiting recent lithographic monoprints by local artist Robbie Sugg! galleryexlibris.com
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Gary Hicks, whose work bristles with an acute challenge to the regressive and repressive facts of our times, is joined by Sharon Doubiago, who for decades has written from a fused personal-political-social standpoint that has earned her untold respect as a poet, short story writer, memoirist and essayist. Jerry Ferraz, native son and peripatetic troubadour, hosts our twice monthly (1st & 3rd Mondays) poetry series.  An open mic follows the featured readers. at wally’s (for Luis Rodriguez) on a good saturday night the notes and the thunder of electric guitar, electric organ and the traditional non-electric ecstatic sax drums, and cymbals fire and thunder through the dark tracer bullets targetting the sources of our genocide. on a good saturday night god has wrapped us in a mantle of salvation while we fire our staccato total rhythmic music, a statement to those who would destroy existence that creation makes no junk…
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which way west? Sunday concert series: Saxophonist Rent Romus Life’s Blood Quartet Timothy Orr, drums with Adam Lowdermilk, Bill Noertker and special guest Amber McZeal. Take a wild ride with the quartet through music of Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, Arthur Blythe, Chico Freeman, Roland Kirk, and jazz originals by Romus and Orr. Life’s Blood “damn well rock their Jazz” says blogger disaster amnesiac, while exploring the influences and inspirations that make the art of jazz and improvisation timeless.  The ensemble pays tribute as well as brings to light, reinvents, deconstructs, and breaths life into the deeper realms of their collective body of memory.  Originally created by saxophonist Rent Romus while on tour in Northern Europe in 1999, the group currently features drummer/percussionist Timothy Orr along with a cast of guest performers from the local San Francicsco scene. Hailed by Downbeat as having “…a bold sound, unmistakeable sincerity and conviction”, Rent Romus…
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Saturday, February 7th – 8-11 pm
jazz club! when lights are low…
Smith Dobson Ensemble
with Noel Jewkes
Smith Dobson, a wonderful young tenor sax player, welcomes Noel Jewkes, a legendary tenor sax man, to the Bird & Beckett stage to show just what the instrument and the music are all about– what they can be about in the hands of deeply skilled practitioners in collaboration. Their excursions will be augmented and taken further by bassist Noah Schenker and drummer Jon Arkin in an evening’s exploration of jazz in its bright moments of creation.
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Contributors to Tule Review, an annual literary journal published by the Sacramento Poetry Center Press, will read recent work and work from the new issue to celebrate its launch. Tule Review has been the literary journal of the Sacramento Poetry Center for twenty years. About five years ago, Tule became the flagship publication of Sacramento Poetry Center Press, a project formed by local poetry professors Tim Kahl and Brad Buchanan. SPC Press currently publishes Tule, full-length collections of poetry, and periodic regional anthologies.
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Straight out of North Beach… The Love Gangsters! Are you ready, Glen Park? Hell yes, you are…
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Howard Alden, passing through from his home in New York City, plays Bird & Beckett’s Friday evening jazz party in a trio format with local heroes and long-time associates Vince Lateano on drums and Peter Barshay on bass. Howard is one of the great jazz guitarists of our era.  In the late 1970s, at the tender age of 21, he traveled to New York City from his home in the Los Angeles area to join the trio led by jazz veteran vibes player Red Norvo.  A few years later he made the move permanent, when he took an extended gig with Joe Bushkin at the Cafe Carlyle.  The rest is history… including recent work recording the solos played in the 1999 Woody Allen film “Sweet and Lowdown” by Sean Penn’s Emmet Ray character, and teaching Sean how to make it look authentic. Read more on Howard’s website at http://howardalden.com/ha6/
Read MoreKaren Lipney conducts a workshop to help you sign up for insurance before the February 15 deadline. Â Bring your questions and quandaries, but rest assured it’s not rocket science!
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Pianist Gaea Schell, bassist Fred Randolph & drummer Tony Johnson join Dave Rocha, one of the Bay Area’s top jazz trumpet players, in our Sunday afternoon which way west? concert series, now in its sixth year of weekly sessions. Dave has worked in the New York big bands of Lionel Hampton and Machito, and with the Latin/Salsa bands of Orchestra Monterey, Tito Garcia and Martin Franco. Since relocating to San Francisco, he’s become a fixture on the scene with his own small unit and teaching gigs.
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Walker Brents III continues his exploration of the mystical side of the Renaissance, with a talk on Marsilio Fichino, a musician and philosopher whose symbolic thought contributes greatly to contemporary poetic speech.
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The original recipe!  Five musicians, great bebop, swinging vocals.  These guys and Dorothy have all been solid senders since the early 1950s, and know their stuff.  Come find out just how sweet & swinging it can be.  Donate what you can to help us pay the band, have a glass of wine or a beer, and hang with the sweetest little neighborhood crowd you could ever want to meet.  Make it your own!
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Vincent Lombardo, a New Yorker out of Milan, will be joined by local poet Jane Rades for a reading January 19th, followed by an open mic. Lombardo’s poems have recently been included in the issue dedicated to contemporary poets in ‘Poets and Poetry’, Italy’s national magazine published in Rome. His work has included the cycles ‘Trees and Silence’ and ‘River Poetry’, as well as portions of the knightly epic ‘Order of the Roaring Stars’, wherein the figure of Parsifal, man’s ‘pure fool’ saviour is a dalmation, borrowing from Schopenhauer’s concerns for animal welfare, as taken up by Richard Wagner’s animalism and anti-vivisection beliefs.  Lombardo is also a dramatist and a mime.  He has lived several decades in Milan where he was originally taken on a Fulbright grant to work in the late 1970’s, to collaborate in the stage directing department of Teatro alla Scala. Jane Rades is a long-time San Franciscan, whose quiet,…
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Drummer Myron Cohen carries the spirit of the late Billy Higgins into the present day, with joy and a propulsive and irresistible beat.  He has partnered with so many fine players and has taken so many young talents under his wing in his desire to be true to Higgins’ spirit.  Today, saxophonist Steve Heckman, a major talent of international stature, joins Myron, pianist Eddie Mendenhall and bassist Joe MacKinley to play two sets of fantastic bop and straight ahead jazz, with guests including the stunningly talented young vocalist, Aspen Jordan. Cohen has played with major artists including Michael Bloomfield, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Otis Spann, Ron Stallings, Azar Lawrence, Ravi Coltrane, Donald ‘Rafael’ Garrett, Woody Shaw, and Wayne Shorter – to name a few.  But his most significant connection may have been with drummer Higgins, who gave a great deal to Cohen including some fascinating stories of his…
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Bassist Heshima Mark Williams presents The Kenny Hawkins Quartet Kenny Hawkins on sax; Muziki Roberson on keyboards; Heshima on bass; and Michael Spencer on drums. When his busy traveling schedule allows, Heshima books our third Saturday jazz club dates.  This week he’s arranged for Kenny Hawkins to bring in a quartet.  A detailed bio on Kenny can be found at this link:  http://groovindeep.com/band_bio/Â
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SUPPORT BIRD & BECKETT - DONATE TODAY!
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
