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!
A reunion poetry reading for Five On the Western Edge, the Momo’s Press 1976 volume of five poets responding to radical politics, including the rise of the women’s movement challenging gender roles. Reading from the original book and new work. Free. Donations welcome. Byob. To reserve a seat, call the shop at 415-586-3733. Live streamed on Bird & Beckett’s YouTube channel and Facebook page. You can get there by visting the homepage of the bookshop’s website at https://www.birdbeckett.com. Click on the videoscreen there, but if the reading hasn’t started yet, you’ll need to refresh your browser until it does start.
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Join us for a powerful evening of live readings, memory, and meaning to celebrate the launch of The Art of Remembering: Volume III, the latest edition of the literary journal produced by the Community Living Campaign Writing Groups, exploring the many ways we hold on, let go, and make sense of what’s come before. This in-person gathering brings together the vibrant voices behind this newest volume—writers who dig deep, tell the truth, and shape remembrance into art. Whether you’re a longtime reader or new to the journal, this is your chance to experience the stories and reflections in real time, straight from the hearts of those who wrote them. Come for the words, stay for the connection. Free and open to all. Bring a friend and grab a chair!
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Thu Ho pays tribute to the great Helen Merrill, a fabulous singer in the golden era of Jazz, who is high on the list of Thu’s greatest influences. Thu will be interpreting tunes from Helen’s greatest albums, including “Dream Of You,” “Helen Merrill,” “You’ve Got A Date With the Blues,” “The Nearness Of You,” and “Helen Merrill With Strings,” with many of these arrangements written by the late great Quincy Jones and Gil Evans. Thu’s ensemble for this date includes remarkable musicians from the Bay Area, including Anne Sajdera on piano, Aaron Germain on upright bass, Joe Kelner on drums, and special guest, master horn player Noel Keith Jewkes! $25 cover charge (cash or venmo at the door, please). Call the bookshop at (415) 586-3733 to reserve seats. Having trained in Jazz, Broadway, Classical, and R&B music, Thu’s voice is imbued with a unique blend of…
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Tony Peebles, saxophone. Erick Peralta, piano. Aaron Germain, bass. Brian Andres, drums. with special guest vocalist, Kenya Moses. $20 cover charge (cash or venmo at the door, please). byob, and make a reservation! Call the shop at 415-586-3733. With saxophonist Tony Peebles, of the Grammy-nominated Pacific Mambo Orchestra, the young and seriously talented pianist Erick Peralta, and the uniquely talented Aaron Germain, drummer Brian Andres’s quartet presents two dynamic jazz sets. In 2007, after spending his career as a sideman, learning and honing his craft, Brian stepped into the role of bandleader and the San Francisco Bay Area was introduced to The Afro-Cuban Jazz Cartel. Featuring Grammy Award winning musicians as well as esteemed music educators, the group continues the rich heritage of San Francisco Bay Area Latin jazz. Incorporating the rich harmonic and improvisational elements of jazz with the irresistible rhythms from the Caribbean to form “the perfect…
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It’s been a year, and what a year it’s been! But science prevails over the darkness, and Tom Hassett never stops probing the secrets of the universe through the vibrations of his drum kit, with his lab assistants Scott Foster, Dan Seamans and Jim Peterson, wielding guitar, bass and saxophone, respectively. Bring a twenty for the band, and your own beverage, and watch them work! If you’re a student, a ten is all it takes, and a child, well, you’re free as a bird.
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Prince Siddhartha’s life-journey, from royal scion to fully enlightened buddha, reveals a pattern universal to us all. As epic in scope and scale as it has proven to be for hundreds of years, it speaks to individual consciousness in ways that never cease to be deeply enriching. In this way it is truly a mysterious story, one with great meaning for the whole world. View the live stream on our YouTube channel or Facebook page, or let us know you’re coming and we’ll find you a seat inside. Knock on the window to get our attention in the darkened bookshop. Bring a little cash to help us reward Walker for his prodigious efforts, now in their third decade enlightening those open to his timeless offerings.
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Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84350265713?pwd=eE84V3BYdWxiSFBHNHhmdUt1WTUzdz09 Meeting ID: 843 5026 5713 Passcode: 244211 Klanmarks, ManuMeants & Plakkks: UnTour Book Across Occupied Turtle Island Book Release Ceremony Yelamu (SF) A reading with some of the Poets and Poverty skolaz Poets: Tiny – Tiny Gray-Garcia aka povertyskola has dealt with chronic homelessness, incarceration and poverty since she was 11 she is a Poet and co-founder of the Po Poets Project, teacher, author & daughter of Dee and the co–founder of POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE/PoorNewsNetwork. co-founder & visionary of Homefulness- a homeless peoples solution to homelessness. and author of Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America, The Sidewalk motel – and many more Victoria, Vick Montaño (They/Them) is a Po-scholar, interdisciplinary artist focusing on Indigenous Solidarity across seas and false man made borders, Queer liberation, the Land Back Movement, and reawakening/reclamation of Ancestral Knowledge. They were born, raised and are sustained in the Village of…
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Lynne Maes, vocals and guitar. Hank Maninger, vocals and lead guitar. Joe Goldmark, pedal steel guitar. Tim Wagar, bass. Leor Beary, drums. $25 cover charge, byob. Reservations, call the shop at 415-586-3733. Classic country duets, honky tonk and rockabilly from two sweethearts who got hitched years ago, and assembled a fantastic band to tell their story and sing the songs they love. Hank has a long history on the twang circuit in these parts and far afield, including his key role in Chris Gaffney’s Hacienda Brothers after coming up through Bonnie Hayes’ Wild Combo, Chuck Prophet’s outfit and the Aqua Velvets, coming into his own with his trio, the Juke Box Charlies, and his long run at the heart of The Seducers, a Bird & Beckett and Riptide staple until that band’s amicable divorce not so long ago. Along the way, Hank met, romanced and married the sharp witted…
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Saki Minamimoto, vocal. Ian Carey, trumpet. Beth Schenck, sax. Matt Wrobel, guitar. Lisa Mezzacappa, bass. Jon Arkin, drums. $30 cover charge; byob. Reservations, call 415-586-3733. Saki Minamimoto is a jazz vocalist, singer-songwriter and improviser born and raised in Japan. She will be performing “Songs From My Attic” with her group, presenting new music and music reminiscent of her adolescence that’s been stored in her mind for a long time, waiting for this moment to be renewed. In two hours tonight, Saki will explore original music, nostalgic pop songs by The Carpenters and Gilbert O’Sullivan, and compositions by Kenny Wheeler, Carla Bley, Lenny Tristano and Leonard Bernstein, with her unique sonic palette and ethereal soundscapes. More insight here from trumpeter Ian Carey, including a podcast interview with Saki. Saki’s Bandcamp page: https://sakiminamimotoponchoponcho.bandcamp.com/music
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Aaron Bennett, tenor saxophone Mark Clifford, vibraphone Brett Carson, keyboard Lisa Mezzacappa, acoustic bass Jordan Glenn, drums $25 cover charge (cash or venmo, please) byob for a reservation, call 415-586-3733 Berkeley bassist and composer Lisa Mezzacappa launches a yearlong residency at Bird & Beckett, to revisit and refresh older repertoire and compose a new set of music for the the latest incarnation of her stellar improvising ensemble. Mezzacappa’s previous works for this group have drawn inspiration from Dashiell Hammett and Paul Auster’s lean noir crime novels and Italo Calvino’s hilarious and poignant Cosmicomics stories. Now she’s exploring the concept of worldbuilding—inspired by teenage Dungeons & Dragons sessions with her metalhead friends, and her fascination with the speculative fiction of Ursula Le Guin, Haruki Murakami and David Mitchell— as a way to envision new kinds of musical interaction, storytelling, structure and play. At the bookstore, she enjoys reading excerpts from…
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Your Bird & Beckett proprietor well remembers the day that piano professor Eric Shifrin laid a cd on me after one of his lovely monthly dates in the bookshop (remember those burned cds that proliferated for the better part of a quarter century?). I put in the shop’s 5-cd changer and forgot about it until one day I was going about my business, thinking “who’s that wonderful piano player coming out of the house sound system” or thoughts to that effect… solo pianistics that seemed so reminiscent of all the classic piano professors from the ragtime, early New Orleans, stride and boogie woogie periods. I pulled it out and it had Eric’s name on it and a date, and those magic two words “New Orleans” — I asked him about it next time I he came in to the shop to play, and he explained he’d been down to that…
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Thursday the 8th at 7:30pm, a Hindustani recital featuring sarodist Souryadeep Bhattacharya and tabla maestro Ferhan Qureshi. Ferhan has been kind enough to curate a wonderful series of Hindustani and Carnatic concerts at Bird & Beckett, roughly once a month for the past many months, with no end date in mind. Souryadeep is a talent vast as the sea. Friday, the jazz is back again with two shows, the first at 6pm and the second at 8:30pm, each with a $20 cover charge (cash, please, as always, and as for all of our shows, byob). Feel free to call the shop at 415-586-3733 to reserve. Pay at the door when you arrive. The May 9th 6pm show will feature the marvelous pianist and raconteur Eric Shifrin, playing the music of Jelly Roll Morton, the man who — he claims — invented jazz! That’s not that far from the truth, and…
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From 8-10pm, Mean to Me, a quintet steeped in classic tunes of the 1940s and ’50s, takes the stage. Judy Butterfield handles the vocals, with Ben Slater on saxophone and piano, Dave Schaff on trumpet, Sam Heminger on bass and Cairo McCockran on drums. A wonderful band. From 5 to 7pm, six young musicians — students at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and University of California at Berkeley — field a jazz ensemble assembled by the young Vietnamese guitarist Tri Pham. With Tri are Ryan Ancheta, trumpet (UC Berkeley); Trent Horio, tenor sax (SFCM); Sean Walters McDonald, bass (SFCM); EJ Brannan, drums (UC Berkeley); and Nhi Do, vocals. Donations appreciated! $25 cover for the late show; byob.
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A reading in turbulent times, with Palestine in mind and heart. Bring your poems. Michael Koch and Jerry Ferraz host. Deema K. Shehabi is a Palestinian-American poet, writer, and editor. She’s the author of Thirteen Departures from the Moon and co-editor with Beau Beausoleil of Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, for which she received a Northern California Book Award. She’s also co-author of Diaspo/Renga (republished as Water to Water in Fall 2025) with Marilyn Hacker and winner of the Nazim Hikmet poetry competition in 2018. Deema’s work has also appeared in Academy of American Poets, Prairie Schooner, Los Angeles Review of Books, Poetry London, Kenyon Review,The Massachusetts Review, and in anthologies including Ask the Night for a Dream: New Palestinian Writing from the Diaspora. Zeina Hashem Beck is a Lebanese poet. Her collection of 40 palindromic sonnets, titled This Was Supposed to Be About Beauty, is forthcoming from Penguin Poets in…
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Friday, May 2nd – two concerts: at 6pm, it’s a trio led by trumpeter Mike Olmos with Jed Holtman, bass, and Andre Sumelius, drums. Mike Olmos is back at 8:30 in saxophonist James Mahone’s quartet with Sam Bevan, bass, and Michael Mitchell, drums. A phenomenal night of small combo jazz. Twenty bucks cash for either show, or catch both for $35. Byob, as always, and a reservation is always a good idea — call the shop at 415-586-3733. Saturday, May 3rd at 7:30pm, trumpeter Erik Jekabson brings a quartet with Matt Renzi on saxophone, Dexter Williams on bass and Brian Fishler, drums. $20 cover, cash please! An interesting sequence of three dates in two days without a piano or guitar in sight. Chordless and bursting with musical intricacy! The two quartet dates this weekend are supported with a subsidy from Jazz in the Neighborhood, a 501(c)3 that puts your support…
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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," 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
