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!
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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Don’t miss the rockin’ wonder from Down Under known as Pugsley Buzzard, playing his third solo show at Bird & Beckett.. Pugs is at once a rollicking stride piano master and a gravelly voiced singer, plumbing the extremes of dark fate and wry, whisky-soaked self-reflection. He plays barrelhouse blues & boogie woogie, growls his dark & titillating songs, and pumps out magnificent Harlem stride with a monstrous left hand and a dextrous right one.  A Sunday afternoon of good company, good music & a glass of decent wine… add a book to that mix, and, why, it’s magic! Read on for a rave review of a recent show by Pugsley in Perth and check Pugsley’s website at http://www.pugsleybuzzard.com/ for sound files and more. We’re proud that Bird & Beckett is his San Francisco home base…  He’s also at Pier 23 and Oakland’s Sound Room on this west coast swing before heading to New Orleans and back home. Last we heard,…
Read MoreRemember the halcyon days when Dave Parker’s jazzmen burned bright at the Red Rock Lounge down at the corner of Chenery & Diamond Street every Friday night! Jerry Logas, tenor sax; Charles Hamilton, trombone; Dave Parker bass; Greg German, drums.Â
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Christopher Gray and J. Raoul Brody join forces with a crew of like-minded friends to pay birthday tribute to — and sing the songs of — Harry Nilsson! A delightfully motley bunch will delve deep into Harry’s career, doing hits he wrote for other people (Three Dog Night’s “One (is the Loneliest Number)”, the Monkees’ “Cuddly Toy”), hits other people wrote for him (“Everybody’s Talkin’”, “(Can’t Live if Living is) Without You”), songs from movies (Popeye, The Point [“Me & My Arrow”? will they take requests?], Skidoo, The Life of Brian), and other oddities (“Good Old Desk”, “You’re Breakin’ My Heart”). Parentheses will abound. Solemn silliness too, we imagine!
Read Morewhich 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 9th – 4:30-6:30 pm: Terry Rodriguez Trio Ranging over jazz terrain from bop to Bill Evans – pianist Terry Rodriguez with bassist Ron Crotty and drummer Tom Hassett.
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On the second Friday of each month, jazz in the bookshop features The Jimmy Ryan Quintet. Drummer Ryan learned the trade in L.A. in the ’50s as well, and hit the San Francisco scene in 1960 — and never looked back. Jimmy has played with legendary musicians like Putter Smith, Vince Wallace, Kent Glenn and Bishop Norman Willliams, putting in significant time at legendary San Francisco clubs like Jimbo’s Bop City and the Gathering Cafe. For his Bird & Beckett dates, trumpeter Henry Hung and trombonist Danny Grewen, two active young players on the local scene, give a rich, fiery and romantic tone to the front line, while guitarist Scott Foster, a Bird & Beckett favorite since the beginning, handles the chordal duties and spins out beautiful lines with aplomb, and Bishu Chatterjee lays down a steady and creative foundation on the upright bass.
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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. May 26th – 4:30-6:30 pm: Pacific Jazz Connection Jerry Logas, a multi-instrumentalist who covers all manner of saxes, clarinet and flute with equal parts lyricism and power, and Smith Dobson V, tenor player extraordinaire, heir to a multi-generational musical tradition and steeped from the cradle in jazz, bring us a fantastic quintet drawing from the deep well of “West Coast Jazz” that set listeners on their collective ear back in the late 1950s. Pacific Jazz Connection is co-led by Jerry Logas on baritone sax and Smith Dobson V on tenor sax, and a truly top-flight rhythm section comprising pianist Keith Saunders, bassist Michael Glynn and drummer Tony Johnson. Smith Dobson’s dad, also Smith, was a key pianist & vibes player on the regional (and national) scene for decades who played with…
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Sunday, May 19, 4:30-6:30 pm which way west? Sunday concert series never a cover charge, but your donations help us pay the musicians! Trumpet player Warren Gale has had a long and esteemed career, and is considered a key bebop player, particularly in West Coast small combo work, with significant time in Stan Kenton’s orchestra as well.  Drummer Jimmy Gallagher hales from Mendocino where he studied with pianist Kent Glenn– he’s been a vital force on the local jazz scene since moving down several years ago. Pianist Matt Clark needs little introduction to Bay Area, and indeed national, jazz audiences. He’s anchored groups with Bobby Hutcherson, Joshua Redman, Marcus Shelby and countless others. Bassist Michael Glynn studied with Basie & Armstrong associate Buddy Catlett, and has played with top-drawer jazz musicians including Bud Shank, Conte Condoli, Don Lanphere and Jon Hendricks! Join us for two sets of top flight jazz…
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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
