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!
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But nothing beats being in the room with the music & the musicians!
Sunday, October 13th, 7:00 pm at the Vogue Theatre 3290 Sacramento Street, at Presidio Bird & Beckett, in association with Litquake, presents: “Mohin’s Horses: South Asian Oral Literature, Poetry & Music” We’ve put together an exciting program of poetry, theatre, music and film for the opening weekend of Litquake that will feature: — Playwright Ranjon Ghosal performing a 30-minute segment of his full-length one-man play based on Rabindranath Tagore’s crucial speech titled “The Crisis of Civilisation”, which Tagore delivered just months before his death at age 83. The play takes a look at Tagore’s life work and these pivotal thoughts expressed eloquently at the very end, in 1941, as the world teetered on the brink of chaos and collapse. Tagore saw the problem of the modern world clearly, as the colonization of the mind. Ranjon Ghosal has traveled from his home in Bangalore in the South Indian state of Karnataka for this event…
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Retro Blue is a band that fully embraces the jazz tradition: swing, bop, blues, r&b and free style, and explores uncharted sonic areas as well… Leader Jim Ryan has been on the Bay Area music scene since the late 90’s and began his active music career in Paris, France in the early ’70s, participating in Steve Lacy’s weekly free jazz jam sessions in Paris. Karl Evangelista is a young, highly original and accomplished guitarist who moved to Oakland from his hometown Los Angeles several years ago. He teaches and is constantly gigging in Oakland and San Francisco. Eli Wallace, a native of the Bay Area, recently received his Masters Degree in Music from The New England Conservatory in Boston. Now he’s back home writing, teaching and gigging with several area bands. Eric Marshall plays upright and electric bass in jazz and improvised music groups. He also leads his own group…
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If you’re ready to trail back to the neighborhood Sunday afternoon, Oct. 6th, by 4:30 or so — after three or four days of Golden Gate Park crowds for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass — we’ll extend the spirit of the affair here at Bird & Beckett. Sunday, October 6th, from 4:30 to 6:30 pm, our “which way west?†series presents Laurel Thomsen, violinist, violist and singer-songwriter, who’s enthralled us before on the bookshop’s stage with her gorgeous flights through old-time Americana, Celtic tunes and originals.  In her recent collaborations, she’s been lauded as a fine blues and Grappeli-esque fiddler as well. A Monterey, California native, Laurel trained classically, but in her early twenties found a home playing in bands, doing studio work, backing singer-songwriters, and as the New York Times reported, being one of those cutting edge teachers moving their private studios online via Skype. At Bird & Beckett, Laurel will entertain with all original songwriting,…
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If you’re ready to trail back to the neighborhood Sunday afternoon, Oct. 6th, by 4:30 or so — after three or four days of Golden Gate Park crowds for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass — we’ll extend the spirit of the affair here at Bird & Beckett. And a week later, Litquake begins — and will include two big Bird & Beckett events. Read on! Sunday, October 6th, from 4:30 to 6:30 pm, our “which way west?” series presents Laurel Thomsen, violinist, violist and singer-songwriter, who’s enthralled us before on the bookshop’s stage with her gorgeous flights through old-time Americana, Celtic tunes and originals.  In her recent collaborations she’s been reported to be quite the Blues and Grappeli-esque fiddler as well! A Monterey, California native, Laurel trained classically, but in her early twenties found a home playing in bands, doing studio work, backing singer-songwriters, and as the New York Times reported, being one of those…
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Alan Kaufman and William Taylor, Jr. join Colleen McKee to celebrate the publication of her first full-length collection of ficton, poetry and memoir, Nine Kinds of Wrong, hot off the presses from JKPublishing. Expect tales of a beautiful world of addictive sorrows; glamorous, unwise sex; crime and cabaret; and more whiskey-soaked death than you can shake a stick at. Colleen has been known to say that she writes poems, memoir, and fiction. That she also teaches people how to communicate about art at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. What else? That she writes most of her poems on public transportation; dreams frequently and in color; and can probably kick your ass in Scrabble. She once claimed to write every day and to try to be a nice person. Were that to fail, said she, she tried at least to be honest. That was when she was promoting her poetry. Now, with this, who…
Read MorePeter 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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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
