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!
“Don’t Discuss State Affairs” (a sign mounted on the wall of the Yutai Teahouse — 1898, 1917, 1945) Lao She’s Teahouse is a classic of the Chinese theatre from the late 1950s, an episodic observation over the decades from the turn of the 20th century through the 1940s, set in a milieu where the common preoccupations of the day — not so very different from era to era – waft through the air. Written in 1957, the play premiered in Beijing in 1958, mounted by the Beijing People’s Art Theatre. It ran for a remarkable and unprecedented 100 or more performances. Teahouse was brought back to the stage on the eve of the Cultural Revolution in 1963; however, it was removed from the repertoire once that period set in.  Lao She was interrogated roughly and publicly humiliated as were many, and died in an apparent suicide in 1966. Teahouse was revived by the Beijing People’s Art Theatre in a 1979 production which toured…
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which way west? Sunday concert series. All ages welcome! No cover charge, but your generous donations make it possible for us to pay the musicians. Sunday, July 21st – 4:30-6:30 pm:  Noel Jewkes/Grant Levin Duo. Noel Jewkes is an acknowledged master of the jazz saxophone in Northern California, a musician’s musician with decades of top flight professional experience under his belt. And now, after just a few short years on the San Francisco jazz scene, Grant Levin is coming on strong as the young piano player everyone wants to hear. We’ve been proud to present both Noel and Grant many times at Bird & Beckett over the years, and now are particularly excited to hear them work as a duo. Not to be missed!
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We’re proud to announce that beginning in July, our “jazz in the bookshop” series will now feature a group led by guitarist Scott Foster on the third Friday of each month. Scott is a founding member of Bird & Beckett’s live jazz tradition, having played guitar on our Friday night dates ever since the series began back in late 2002. He’s also our favorite local jazz guitarist, bar none, and we’re pleased to now be able to present him with his own group on a monthly basis as part of the regular rotation in our Friday jazz in the bookshop series. For the July 19th debut of Scott’s regular monthly appearance as a leader at Bird & Beckett, he’ll be bringing in a trio featuring Adam Shulman on organ and drummer Dan Foltz, playing in a classic bluesy, groove that will thrill you to the core. Each and every month, we present Don Prell’s Seabop Ensemble on the first Friday,…
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 which way west? a weekly concert series at Bird & Beckett every Sunday afternoon, 4:30 to 6:30 there’s no cover charge, but your generous donations at the gigs and to the non-profit “Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project” make it possible for us to pay the musicians!  Pianist Grant Levin has made a name for himself in short order since moving to the Bay Area, and we’ve been hearing from him at Bird & Beckett in a number of contexts with more coming up — sitting in with our regular Friday bands, playing as a member of the groups called Hawkeye and Homespun, adding crucial flavor to projects with seasoned bassist Peter Barshay, renowned reedman Noel Jewkes and vocalist Sandra Aran. Each time, it’s a pleasure to experience the rich, inventive language that Grant Levin brings to the keyboard. This weekend — Sunday, July 14th — we’re pleased to present Grant leading a trio of his…
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which way west? Sunday concert series. All ages welcome! No cover charge, but your generous donations make it possible for us to pay the musicians. Sunday, June 30 – 4:30-6:30 pm: The Matt Renzi Quartet Matt Renzi on sax and oboe Misha Khalikulov, cello John Wiitala, bass Smith Dobson V, drums Based now in New York City and Rome, Renzi grew up in San Francisco — where his father, Paul Renzi, was principal flautist for the San Francisco Symphony until his retirement in 2004, having joined that organization at the age of 18. Matt’s grandfather, Paolo Renzi, was principal oboist for Arturo Toscanini’s NBC Symphony Orchestra. Matt studied with the late saxophone titan Joe Henderson as well as South Indian vocalist R. A. Ramamani. Renzi’s sidemen for this date are among the most talented jazz players on the San Francisco scene.  Come early if you need to snare a seat!             …
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Please join us for a celebration of the work of two photographers with deep roots in San Francisco. Charles Wong’s photo essays of Chinatown in the 1950s make a good starting point and the striking black and white work that both he and Irene Poon have done through the decades evoke much that is at once familiar and unique about the City and its populace, while ranging much wider as well. A small selection of photos by Wong and Poon will remain on display at Bird & Beckett through the end of July. Both have recent monographs available for sale as well – Wong’s Black & White/Sweet & Sour and Poon’s Point/Counterpoint. Visit www.velvetlenscap.com for a preview of the work of both photographers. Charles Wong was born in San Francisco in 1922.  After finishing high school he received a scholarship to the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) in…
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Sunday, June 23, at 2 pm, Bruce Neuburger will present his book, just published by Monthly Review Press, that details his immersion in the life most of us have only viewed through the windows of our cars as we hurtle along through the agricultural heartland of California. Bruce was and remains a committed radical politically, and worked long and hard in the fields, a milieu occupied predominantly by people who by virtue of the color of their skin are consigned to the work. The book has been praised for the vividness of the writing, for the humanity of the writer, and for the scope of its observation.
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which way west? Sunday concert series. All ages welcome! No cover charge, but your generous donations make it possible for us to pay the musicians. Sunday, June 23rd – 4:30-6:30 pm:  Chaude Symphonie Trio. A century ago, France sizzled with “le jazz hot” — taking up the American classical music created by King Oliver, Louis Armstrong and their confreres as it developed in New Orleans, Chicago and New York and swinging it in the Paris music halls and clubs, energizing it with the gypsy spin of guitarist Django Reinhart. The music thrills to this day! Now, in the San Francisco of the 21st century, the dynamic crossover cellist Rebecca Roudman leads le Chaude Symphonie, a group assaying a virtuosic and hard swinging exploration of 20th century hot jazz and quite a bit more. We’ll be presenting the trio version of this group, with Rebecca playing cello, Jason Eckl on guitar and Xander Abbe on violin. Rebecca is a renowned cellist, playing classical…
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Special Saturday Night Theatre Event! “Bits of Beckett”  George Killingsworth and Hal Hughes perform short works and fragments from the work of Samuel Beckett… perhaps we’ll get Rough for Theatre I, a bit of Endgame, a bit of Molloy… maybe Ohio Impromptu… the boys have long experience voicing these and many other choice bits, so we’ll leave it up to them what they wish to deliver… our pleasure will be to attend to the words, the enigmas, & the rough & tumble of performance… perhaps an hour of your evening this balmy Saturday next, well spent in the company of three splendid chaps and their fertile imaginations… Hal Hughes has bounced around the fringes of the Bay Area arts world for decades, writing and playing music, acting, making and performing poems, and more, often in collaborations between art forms. As North Beach Beckett, he and George (with Jack Halton) performed Rough…
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jazz in the bookshop every Friday evening… 5:30 to 8:00 pm Tonight, Friday, June 21st, a special appearance by the Danny Brown Quartet, led by the finest young tenor player this town has to offer. Not to be missed!
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Book Release Party with author Daniel Harmon! From San Francisco’s own Zest Books…  Super Pop! Pop Culture Top Ten Lists to Help You Win at Trivia, Survive in the Wild, and Make It Through the Holidays Super Pop offers a maximum-pleasure, minimum-effort way to become smarter, happier, and a little bit more likely to survive a shark attack. This hilarious and wide-ranging guide sorts nearly 500 different bestsellers, blockbusters, and underappreciated gems into quirky top ten lists, like “How to Outwit Death: Essential Survival Tales,†and “Wax on: Wise Old Men Who Can Show You the Way.†With new insights on old classics and fresh ideas for jaded eyes, Super Pop makes sense of pop culture—and then puts pop culture back to work! ABOUT THE AUTHOR Daniel Harmon is the editorial director at Zest Books, an award-winning publisher of nonfiction books teens and young adults based in San Francisco, and…
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Poets Raina Leon, Alexandra Mattraw, and Jessica Wickens will be reading from their recently published books. Dr. Raina J. Leon, Cave Canem graduate fellow (2006) and member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, has been published in several journals and anthologies. Her first collection of poetry, Canticle of Idols, was a finalist for both the Cave Canem First Book Poetry Prize (2005) and the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize (2006) and is now available through Wordtech Communications. Her second manuscript, Boogeyman Dawn, was a finalist for the Naomi Long Madgett Prize (2010) and will be published by Salmon Poetry in 2013. She has received fellowships and residencies with Cave Canem, CantoMundo, Montana Artists Refuge, the Macdowell Colony, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Annamaghkerrig, Ireland and Ragdale. She headed the High School Literacy Project at the University of North Carolina where…
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Peter Barshay is a fine bassist with a long and impressive track record, not to mention a beautiful tone & musical intelligence. With Grant Levin on piano and Bryan Bowman on drums, this will go down in your personal annals as one of the best trios you’ve laid ears on! Don’t miss out! On the jazz scene here for just a few years, Grant Levin has quickly become one of the most in-demand pianists on the Bay Area jazz scene, with a sophisticated harmonic and rhythmic approach that belies his youth. Bryan Bowman has been setting a high bar for Bay Area drummers in the avant garde and straight ahead traditions for over 20 years. As for Peter Barshay, he’s renowned in the Bay Area and nationally, and has shared the bandstand with such jazz luminaries as Kenny Barron, Freddie Hubbard, Sonny Stitt, Kenny Werner, Shirley Horn, Woody Shaw, Pharoah Sanders, Blue Mitchell, Tony…
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Editor/Illuminator Brian Lucas is joined by a cohort of contributors to his ongoing illuminated book project, about which one might find more here: http://poetbook.tumblr.com/ Readers will include Micah Ballard, Gillian Conoley, Patrick James Dunagan, Derek Fenner, Andrew Joron, Ava Koohbor, Sara Larsen, Todd Melicker, Joseph Noble, Julien Poirier and Cedar Sigo.
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Nancy Morejon is likely the best known and most widely translated woman poet of post-revolutionary Cuba. Born in 1944 in Havana to a militant dock worker and a trade-unionist seamstress, Morejón graduated from Havana University. She has received the Critic’s Prize (1986) and the National Prize for  Literature (2001). She declares, “I am, at once, Nancy Morejon, an individual, a unity, who cannot be subdivided into parts as one does when learning math…I am not more of a black person than a woman; I am not more of a woman than a Cuban; I am not more of a black person than a Cuban. I am a brief combustion of those factors.†Poet Jayne Cortez has called her poems “lyrical, compassionate, complex, and dazzling in their subtleties.†Please join us for an hour with Nancy Morejon in conversation with Tony Ryan.
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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
