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!
Violinist Drew Cranfill and pianist Manu Petaia perform a program of sonatas by Bach, Mozart and Brahms, in solo and duo format.
Read MoreA reading and discussion of new work by poets, translators and editors Jesse Nathan, Benjamin Paloff, and Alissa Valles. Jesse Nathan’s poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, the Nation, jubilat, and elsewhere. He’s a founding editor of the McSweeney’s Poetry Series, and the former managing editor of the Best American Nonrequired Reading. Nathan is working on a PhD in English literature at Stanford. He lives in the southeast corner of San Francisco. Benjamin Paloff is the author of The Politics (Carnegie Mellon, 2011), a collection of poems; his next, And His Orchestra, is forthcoming in early 2015. He has also translated several works from Central and Eastern Europe, most recently Marek BieÅ„czyk’s Transparency (Dalkey Archive, 2012) and Andrzej Sosnowski’s Lodgings: Selected Poems (Open Letter, 2011). His poems have appeared in A Public Space, The Paris Review, and elsewhere, and he writes regularly for The Nation and the Times…
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At 1:00 pm, some neighborhood youths will strap on guitars & all the rest for a set of rock ‘n’ roll — They’re The Optimals & they’re ready to take on the world… At 4:30, we’ll bring it right down to the sweet spot where The Temescal String Quartet will set the bookshop atmosphere vibrating with classic repertoire.  The Temescal Quartet comprises violinists Barbara Riccardi and Katherine Button, viola player Jonna Hervig and cellist Victoria Ehrlich — all members of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra.
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Tonight, poet QR Hands “trades fours” with improvising pianist Walter Earl. Trading fours is a jazz tradition, where members of an ensemble take turns stepping up to the mic for short solo bursts over the length of the standard jazz chorus. Â Take our word for it, it’s energized and exciting & these two individuals are guaranteed to take it to a level that will leave you wanting more… but inevitably, we’ll take a break around 8 pm, and will follow that with our open mic, which traditionally kicks off with a song or poem by m.c. Jerry Ferraz, who can be uncanny in his channeling of the bardic wanderers of yore, and concludes with a tale or a poem by resident storytelling mystic Walker Brents III. Our featured performers, QR Hand and Walter Earl, are both fascinating & hugely talented. Â You won’t be disappointed. Â Worth coming out in the cold…
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Sixteen Days in Turkey…Ten Nights of Music Dore Stein’s Tangents Turkey Music Tour promo concert & talk Sunday, Feb. 2nd, 1:30-3:00 pm (before you might need to hustle over to Glen Park Station to watch the Super Bowl), come hear Gari Hegedus play Turkish music on oud & baglama, catch a few poems from Clara Hsu, and then hear Tangents radio host Dore Stein (KALW 91.7 fm) discuss the tour he’s leading to Turkey this coming October.   You just might want to go along!  No obligation, though…all welcome! 10 concerts in 16 nights — & lots and lots of ambling around Istanbul & environs! In addition to being co-founder of Stellamara and Teslim, Gari Hegedus also performs with Janam, The Helladelics, Eliyahu and the Qadim Ensemble and Hamed Nikpay. He has toured with the Mevlevi Dervish (Sufi) Order of America.and is also a luthier. Clara Hsu is a prolific poet and also co-owner of the Poetry Hotel…
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Among the handful of astonishingly talented young piano players on the San Francisco jazz scene, Michael is often heard at Bird & Beckett on the first Friday of the month in bassist Don Prell’s group. This afternoon, we have the distinct pleasure of presenting Michael fronting his own trio, showcasing original compositions as well as wailing on bop chestnuts and other standards of the jazz repertoire.
Read MoreBassist Dave Parker leads this group, which features trombonist Charles Hamilton, reed player Jerry Logas and drummer Bob Marshall. Â Sizzling jazz, like you used to hear down on the corner at the Red Rock Lounge back in the early days of the 21st century!
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Moh Alileche, born in Kabylia in the mountains of Algeria, came to the San Francisco Bay Area and took up residence in 1990. Â A few years ago, in 2011, he relocated to Portland, but he travels back to this area from time to time, and we are fortunate to be able to present him once again to Bird & Beckett audiences with a fine ensemble of local musicians — long-time associates who have well learned the music of Moh’s home culture. The Imazighen are indigenous people of North Africa dating back to at least 10,000 B.C., whose home encompasses a vast area extending from Morocco, Western Sahara and Mauritania on the Atlantic coast across Algeria, Tunisia and Libya and into Egypt as far as the Nile, including the coastal plains and the Atlas Mountains in the north and the desert regions south to the Niger River — a huge…
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Walker Brents III offers a contemplative glance of the poem as a whole image of itself. See with the ears, Hear with the eyes. The last Sunday of each month, Walker Brents takes us along another meander. Â Where it takes you is the question…
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Rob Reich, piano and accordion. Todd Sickafoose, bass. Eric Garland, drums. Nothin’ but jazz!
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A reading by Susan Cohen, Lucille Lang Day, Julia B. Levine, Colleen McKee, Melissa Stein, Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet. With works by over 100 poets, The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry, edited by Deborah Ager and M.E. Silverman, celebrates contemporary writers, born after World War II, who write about Jewish themes. This anthology brings together poets whose writings offer fascinating insight into Jewish cultural and religious topics and Jewish identity. Featuring established poets as well as representatives of the next generation of Jewish voices, it includes poems by Ellen Bass, Charles Bernstein, Carol V. Davis, Edward Hirsch, Jane Hirshfield, David Lehman, Jacqueline Osherow, Ira Sadoff, Philip Schultz, Alan Shapiro, Jane Shore, Judith Skillman, Melissa Stein, Matthew Zapruder, and many others.
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On January 17th, Scott will revisit the music and influence of guitarist Jim Hall, leading a fine trio that will feature bassist Adam Gay and drummer Jim Zimmerman. Guitarist Scott Foster, who’s been on the Friday gig since its beginning in late 2002, now assembles a fresh ensemble of musicians for each of his monthly “Third Friday” dates.
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The Grace of Crows:  Jerry Ferraz, long-time host of our ongoing poetry series at Bird & Beckett — and a key bard of the San Francisco poetic axis that runs through North Beach and the Mission District — will read from two chapbooks that have just been produced.  The first, The Golden Key is an epic work that he has long performed with guitar, though tonight he’ll read it without accompaniment.  The second is a set of poems he’s composed over the past few years on his frequent stays at the family’s Gill Ranch retreat up near the mouth of the Russian River.  Called The Grace of Crows, it comprises several dozen pieces of varying lengths born of his observation of the wildlife and natural world there.  Born in Eureka Valley, Jerry is inextricably linked with the poetry that has grown and flowered in and around San Francisco these many decades. An…
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Subtitled “How Five Teen Pastimes Got Caught in the Crossfire, and Why Teens are Taking Them Back”, Beth Winegarner shows why we can “stop blaming teen violence on the wrong things–and…understand how Slayer, Satanism and Grand Theft Auto can be a healthy part of growing up.” Read more on Beth’s blog at http://bethwinegarner.squarespace.com/the-columbine-effect/
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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
