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!
Sunday “which way west “series always 4:30-6:30 pm Today, September 14th, THE LOST TRIO celebrates the release of their new cd, MONKWORK Phillip Greenlief, sax Dan Seamans – bass Tom Hassett – drums Join us to hear one of the Bay Area’s longest standing trios (now celebrating 20 years!) perform works from their newest CD, featuring an all-Thelonious Monk program presented in fresh arrangements by the Lost Trio. . . Saturday jazz club series — always 8:00 to 11:00 pm 9/13 – THE GRANT LEVIN TRIO FEATURING NOEL JEWKES Noel Jewkes, reeds Grant Levin, piano Glenn Richman, bass Mark Lee, drums ‘ ‘ ‘ Friday “jazz in the bookshop” series — always 5:30 to 8:00 pm 9/12 – THE BIRD & BECKETT BEBOP BAND Hart Smith, flugelhorn Stephen Norfleet, tenor sax Sam Kady, piano Aaron Cohn, bass Jimmy Ryan, drums. . . . $10 suggested donation Friday and Sunday $10 cover charge for jazz club on Saturday (jazz club members…
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Smith Dobson V — widely regarded a key young musician on the San Francisco jazz scene on vibes, drums and sax — leads Bird & Beckett’s first Saturday jazz club dates. He is heir to several generations of jazz talent — his father, Smith Dobson IV, was one of the very best jazz pianists in the Bay Area and his mother, Gail Dobson, is a wonderful vocalist who will be bringing her own groups into Bird & Beckett in a few months, as her cd “How Fragile We Are”, with Smith on vibes and a wonderful group of musicians, debuts.  Smith’s sister Sasha is a vocalist based in NYC, whom we hope to lure out early in 2015 to share a date. When Smith was coming up, legendary jazz drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath, said of him, “He has the talent, determination and persistence as a musician, combined with the dedication necessary to…
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Charles Curtis Blackwell, though his vision is profoundly impaired, is a renowned painter as well as an incredible poet, steeped in jazz.  His books include Lou Next Door and Is, the Color of Mississippi Mud.  Just out is the latest poetry collection, title to follow. An exhibition of Charles’ paintings — “The Mood, The Music, The Passion in Art” — is up through September 6th at the Oakland Public Library’s 14th Street branch.  More info available by clicking here.
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Live music from the Bird & Beckett bandstand three nights a week, EVERY week! Fridays, it’s “jazz in the bookshop” from 5:30 to 8:00 pm. Saturdays, “jazz club” from 8 to 11. Sundays, our “which way west?” concert series from 4:30 to 6:30 pm — mostly jazz, plus a few other things to broaden our horizons Friday, August 29th – jazz in the bookshop – 5:30-8:00 pm – special fifth Friday booking – The Dave Parker Quartet Plus One, with Charles Hamilton, trombone; Jerry Logas, sax; Hal Richards, sax; Dave Parker, bass; Bob Marshall, drums.  CD release party!  Jazz is My Religion – recorded live at Bird & Beckett! Saturday, August 30th - jazz club – 8:00-11:00 pm - Pacific Jazz Connection, with Jerry Logas and Smith Dobson, reeds; Keith Saunders, piano; John Wiitala, bass; Tony Johnson, drums – live recording session!.  $10 cover , or $7 for jazz club members ($75 annual dues). Sunday, August…
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Join us for a Friday evening celebration of a fantastic recording! Â The Dave Parker Quartet — with Dave on bass, Charles Hamlton on trombone, Jerry Logas on baritone sax, guest artist Hal Richards on soprano sax and Bob Marshall on drums will convene at Bird & Beckett to celebrate the quartet’s live CD — “Jazz is My Religion” — recorded right here! Bassist Dave Parker has fielded a quartet at Glen Park venues for over a decade — memorably at the Red Rock Lounge and now P’tit Laurent down at the corner of Diamond & Chenery, and many the fifth Friday booking at Bird & Beckett has been his. Â The last three dates have yielded a bumper crop of recordings, which he’s boiled down to this exquisite CD. Join us for the music and the party!
Read MoreA voice in poetry like Ayo’s does not come along often.  Attend to it and see what you find there.  Ayo’s father, Ra-Ta, will ride along on saxophone.  “some kind of poetic musical endeavor…” says Ayo… “or musical poetic endeavor…whatever. Me reading, my dad playing etc. Come on down, invite a friend, have a drink (there’s usual wine at these things).” An open mic follows, kicked off by our long-time host Jerry Ferraz… always an interesting, often a brilliant, time…
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Aggressively whimsical and charmingly incoherent. Reconnaissance Fly deliriously mixes Spam poetry, found texts and original lyrics with jazz, progressive rock, funk, samba, free improvisation, a small Chinese gong, and an arsenal of wind instruments all deployed against the forces of tedium! Amanda Chaudhary with keyboard and electronics; Rich Lesnik playing clarinet, bass clarinet, and soprano and tenor saxophones; Polly Moller with voice, flutes and guitar; Larry the O on the drums, and Tim Walters on bass guitar and electronics. On January 17, 2014, Edgetone Records opened a small cat carrier and released Reconnaissance Fly’s debut album, Flower Futures, into the wild. Live shows in support of this CD will be many and varied, including this one at Bird & Beckett.  In the fall you can run down to the Mojave Desert for some kinda seriously out of pocket experience, or wait ’til November and catch them here in town in the midst of a major Sun Ra extravaganza.  Dig the drummer today,…
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which way west? Sunday afternoon concert series. Never a cover charge, but your donations help us pay the musicians! $10 to $15 suggested for this date, but it’s totally your call. Sunday, August 17th from 4:30-6:30 pm: Vocalist and harmonium player Sukhawat Ali Khan brings in an ensemble with a second vocalist plus flute and tabla to perform music rooted in his family’s 500-year old Sham Chorasi tradition, shaped by his travels in today’s international, transcultural club and concert world. Sukhawat’s father and uncle, Ustad Salamat Ali Khan and Nazakat Ali Khan, were the preeminent classical vocal artists in Pakistan throughout the 40s and 50s, extending the Sham Chorasi gharana tradition that had been passed down through many generations within the Ali Khan family — a tradition that continues in the work of Sukhawat, his sister Riffat Sultana, and several of their brothers who remain in Pakistan. Sukhawat and Riffat…
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A new documentary film on Sangeeta Michael Berardi, avant garde jazz guitarist. Sangeeta will be on hand, along with director Burrill Crohn. Sangeeta Michael Berardi, from the 60s through the late 1990s, was a fantastic guitarist playing with the top musicians on the “out” side of jazz — Archie Shepp, Roswell Rudd, Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Rashied Ali, Eddie Gomez among them — and made memorable recordings that sound fresh to this day In 2000, Sangeeta contracted Parkinson’s disease and a film on Sangeeta — “Playing with Parkinson’s” by director Burrill Crohn — is now nearing release. The film delves deeply to show us a musician whose intellect, talent, creativity and engagement have not dimmed an iota, regardless of the physical effect on his body. Sangeeta lives in Pacifica now, and his daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren live close by Bird & Beckett. It’s been very much a pleasure knowing…
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Scott Foster guitar, leads a stellar quartet, with Charlie McCarthy, sax; John Clark, bass and Omar Aran, drums, in a program of Bird, Monk and more.
Read MoreTry ours!  Anywhere from a half dozen to a dozen people show up once a month (two of them have been coming for more than 15 years! while others come and go) to discuss a wide range of books — from lightweight confections to serious fiction, issue oriented stuff, historical tomes, popular culture, the gamut… The group now meets on the second Thursday of each month. August 14th, the book is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s much acclaimed Americanah, a novel riding high on the best seller lists. For the September 11th meeting, the group will discuss British author Rose Macaulay’s classic romp, The Towers of Trebizond, published in 1956. Much deference is given to new members in selecting something for the group to read.  Usually, the group has two months’ reading lined up at any given time.  At each meeting, they kick around what they might be interested in discussing a couple of…
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Author Sandra Hunter presents her debut novel, Losing Touch.  Joined by three colleagues:  poets Garrett Groenveld and Gary Turchin and essayist Barbara Yoder. After Indian Independence Arjun brings his family to London, but hopes of a better life rapidly dissipate. His wife Sunila spends all day longing for a nice tea service, his son suddenly hates anything Indian, and his daughter, well, that’s a whole other problem. As he struggles to enforce the values he grew up with, his family eagerly embraces the new. But when Arjun’s right leg suddenly fails him, his sense of imbalance is more than external. Diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, he is forced to question his youthful impatience and careless cruelty to his family, until he learns, ultimately, to love them despite — or because of — their flaws. In a series of tender and touching glimpses into the shared life of a married couple, Sandra Hunter…
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This week, saxophone legend Noel Jewkes joins –Grant Levin, piano –Mark Lee, drums — tba, bass for 3 sets of soulful, swinging jazz and bebop Grant Levin, jazz pianist ne plus ultra, produces our jazz club 2nd Saturday sessions.  Each outing, you can expect a group comprising some of the Bay Area’s finest jazz musicians, percolated through the sensibilities of one of its very finest young jazz pianists. $10 cover charge tonight for Noel Jewkes and the Grant Levin Trio. Besides being a jazz club, this is a jazz club — join jazz club for $75 per year, and your cover charge is just $7. Jazz Club features the Bay Area’s top jazz talent, and happens at Bird & Beckett every Saturday starting with our August 9th show.  August 16th will be film screening of a new documentary film on free jazz guitarist Sangeeta Michael Berardi.  Note: 7:30 start time.  No cover…
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Emerging poet Robbie Sugg will be joined by John Landry and Marina Lazzara for a celebratory reading on the occasion of the release of Robbie’s first collection of poems. Koccha, (Days Eye Press, 2014) is titled after the Miwok word for “house” or “shelter”.  It is a stunning gathering of California-inspired poems addressing the relationships between people and the land from which they live. Robbie studied painting, printmaking, papermaking, and Japanese language at San José State University, and his artwork has appeared in galleries throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as in New Bedford, Massachusetts, New York City, and Worcester, England. He plays the guzheng, a 22-stringed ancient Chinese zither. Presently, he lives with one foot on the Big Island of Hawai‘i and the other on the shores of San Francisco Bay.  Marina Lazzara was raised in Easton, Pennsylvania where the Lehigh River falls into the Delaware. She…
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Betty Shaw, piano Bob Kenmatsu, sax Robb Fisher, bass Ron Marabuto, drums. Betty Shaw’s love & deep understanding of jazz has 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 piano 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 very long stretch. But in her 30s, Betty was already gravitating back to the piano, and to jazz, in a big way– enamored of Bill Evans & taking every opportunity to hear him at Shelly’s Manne Hole and wherever she could, digging also pianist Tommy…
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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
