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!
Live Jazz on Sunday / Poets on Monday Sunday, July 15 – 4:30 to 6:30 pm The Noel Jewkes Quartet Noel Jewkes (reeds), Grant Levin (piano), Adam Gay (bass), Bryan Bowman (drums) — joined for a tune on each set by vocalist Marky Quayle Noel Jewkes has been a mainstay on the Northern California jazz scene since he blew in from the wilds of Utah in the early 1960s–his longest hiatus was probably a couple of weeks round about last Christmas, when he consented to a little heart surgery. Soon enough, he was back on the bandstand. His weekly sessions at Mauro’s Sausalito Seahorse Musica each Tuesday draws top musicians week in and week out, always glad to play with a man who’s long been considered one of the best musicians in the region. In Noel’s five decades here on the coast, he’s been called on to work with singers…
Read MoreSunday, July 8 – 2:30 pm Look What the Cat Dragged in Again A CD release party for Whitman McGowan’s latest Whitman McGowan started his spoken word career reading poems at a back alley coffeehouse, The Espresso Bar in Pasadena, California, where he put poems for a dollar each on the menu. After moving north to San Francisco (where his UC Santa Barbara teacher Kenneth Rexroth previously held a famous salon) he became best known for crafting a pagan anthem, “White Folks Was Wild Once, Too.†The difficulty in obtaining copies of this, his newest and fourth album, from Viridiana Records, renders it instantly collectible. The spoken word is accompanied by multi-instrumentalist Don Kirby (known for accompanying Ravi Shankar on tanpura), plus Canadian musicians Johnny and Johnny and Margery Snyder on flute. It also incorporates the surprising recording debut of his alter ego Trungpa Bumbleché, who as a would be…
Read MoreJune 29-July 1 6/29 – Friday – jazz in the bookshop Special Fifth Friday Booking! Mad & Eddie Duran Eddie Duran, born in San Francisco in 1925, had become one of the top jazz guitarists on the local scene by the late 1940s. He got the call to play in Charlie Parker’s band at the Say When Club on Bush Street in 1952, sharing the bandstand with Chet Baker and Lawrence Marable, and has played and recorded with dozens of major figures along the way — including Stan Getz, Cal Tjader, George Shearing, Earl “Fatha” Hines and Jon Hendricks. For four years through 1980 he was in Benny Goodman’s band — check out this link to a video of Eddie, bassist Al Obidinski and drummer John Markham onstage with Benny at Tokyo’s Budokan Hall, in a trio performance of Prelude to a Kiss while Benny and pianist Teddy Wilson look…
Read MoreMonday, June 18, 7 pm POETS! plus an open mic! so bring your best… hosted by Jerry Ferraz — 1st & 3rd Monday of each month Noel Black lives in Colorado Springs with his wife, artist Marina Eckler, and their son Ursen. Co-founder with Ed Berrigan of LOG Magazine and publisher of the Angry Dog Midget Editions in the late 1990s, he has since worked as a writer and producer for a wide variety of media outlets including The Stranger and WNYC. He currently works as a producer for KRCC public radio. He is the author of six chapbooks, including Hulktrans (Owl Press, 2008) and In The City of Word People (Blue Press, 2008). His most recent book of poetry is USELYSSES (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011). Cralan Kelder was born in 1970 and grew up between California and The Netherlands. An anthropologist by training, he has edited numerous literary magazines,…
Read MoreNext weekend (June 22-24): Friday – jazz in the bookshop w/The Chuck Peterson Quintet Saturday – shop for books! Sunday – 2pm – Poets/Writers Loren Bell & Sharon Doubiago: The Things They Carried Sunday – 4:30pm – which way west? Sunday Concert Series Jinx Jones & the Jazzabilly All Stars
Read MoreFriday, June 15 – 5:30 to 8:00 pm The Third Quartet jazz in the bookshop every Friday evening without fail! On the third Friday of each month, a quartet made up of series founders Chuck Peterson (tenor sax), Scott Foster (guitar) and Don Prell (bass) augmented by drummer Ron Marabuto or Omar Aran (this month it’s Omar) holds forth from the Bird & Beckett stage while the neighborhood parties on! Frank Phipps (marching trombone) sits in for Chuck this week. Folks who made it to our “Big Bash at the Clubhouse” a few weeks ago and who stayed to the end will recall the lovely bass & trombone duo performance that Don and Frank gave us to wrap up a really lovely afternoon. If you didn’t hear that, then you have all the more reason to get down to the store this evening for a reprise… In any case, the…
Read MoreSunday & Monday 2 days – 6 poets – 4 jazz musicians Sunday, June 17 – 2:00 pm Poets! Matthew Keuter has published in journals across the U.S. and U.K. The Short Imposition of Living, a book length collection of poetry, is available from Rain Mountain Press. His plays have been produced in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado and New York City. Matthew edits the little mag called Mudfish: A Journal of Art & Poetry. Jennifer Kulbeck is a poet, letterpress printer, collector of stray pastimes, people and household objects from garage sales and street corners, and graduate student in the creative writing program at SF State. Daniel Suarez in a first generation Cuban-American. born and raised in Chicago, who now resides in San Francisco. He is currently in the process of translating the poetry of Robert Creely into Spanish and the poetry of Jose Lezama Lima into English. His poems can…
Read MoreSunday, June 10 – 2:30 pm Poet Alice Rogoff Barge Wood A reading of new work by a key local poet, co-editor of the Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal. “The golden leaves form fan shaped piles on the sidewalk while a woman sleeps hugged to the pavement.” — from the poem, “Ginko Leaves Falling in the Tenderloin” Barge Wood, Alice Elizabeth Rogoff CC. Marimbo, Berkeley, 2012. Sunday, June 10 – 4:30-6:30 pm Maurice Tani: 77 El Deora which way west? Sunday concert series | all ages welcome. your donations help us pay the band! Pure country music in a honky tonk vein, shading into some dark and swirling “hillbilly noir” — from one of the very best alt-country performers/composers on the local scene. If you like George Jones with your George Dickel and Patsy Cline with your PBR, that’s a good starting point… then be prepared dive ever deeper into the heartbreak and…
Read MoreFriday, June 8 – 5:30 to 8:00 pm The Jimmy Ryan Quintet jazz in the bookshop Fridays in Glen Park Jimmy Ryan has been our drummer of choice at Bird & Beckett since the Friday evening series started in October 2002… first with the late guitarist Henry Irvin’s band (featuring vocalist Dorothy Lefkovits), then with the regular Friday crew, which was led by Chuck Peterson on tenor sax with Scott Foster on guitar and Don Prell on bass. All four of these core instrumentalists, and Dorothy as well, continue to keep the jazz flame burning each week at Bird & Beckett. We’ve never missed a Friday session since the beginning– so we’re coming up on 500 consecutive Fridays very soon indeed. Now Don leads a band, “SeaBop” on the first Friday of the month, Jimmy leads one on the second Friday (which features Scott on guitar, bassist Bishu Chatterjee or…
Read MoreMonday, June 4 – 7:00 pm Tinker Greene & Carrie Hunter POETS! PLUS AN OPEN MIC 1st & 3rd Monday of each month Hosted by Jerry Ferraz Tinker Greene moved here in 1980. Originally from Vermont, he has spent time in New York City, followed by a decade in BurlingtonVT where he served a lively poetry community as a coordinator. In San Francisco, Tinker has photographed, hiked the wilderness, and more recently, issued a series of well-received chapbooks of his own poems, which he distributes for free. He will be reading new work. Carrie Hunter received her MFA/MA in the Poetics program at New College of California, edits the small chapbook press, ypolita press, and is a member of the Black Radish Books publishing collective. Recent poems appear in Big Bell, TH.CE, and in the video journal Jupiter 88. Chapbooks include Vorticells (Cygist Press), A Musics (Arrow as Aarow), Angel,…
Read MoreSunday, June 3 – 2:00 pm Luxorius! Opera Omnia: Or, a Duet for Sitar and Trombone Art Beck reads from his new book of translations Art Beck has devised an extended set of translations of the poems of Luxorius, the 6th century (c.e.) provincial Roman poet who lived in North Africa during the time of the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Beck first published some of these translations in the early 1980s, but has expanded and extended these to book length. This stuff is anything but dry, folks! Do come! Read Neeli Cherkovski’s review in Big Bridge magazine here: http://www.bigbridge.org/BB16/prose/prosencherkovski2.htm Sunday, June 3 – 4:30 to 6:30 pm Joe Warner Trio young players – classic jazz! which way west? Sunday concert series all ages welcome. your donations help us pay the band! jazz trio with pianist Warner, bassist Gary Johnson and drummer Alex Nash. Warner, not yet 20…
Read MoreSunday, May 27 – 4:30 to 6:30 pm Tango No. 9 feat. vocalist Zoltan diBartolo which way west? Sunday concert series – all ages welcome! – $10 suggested donation per adult Tango is a deeply mesmerizing music — and dance form, of course — finding its deepest roots in Argentina while exerting a global influence bordering on mania, inspiring practitioners around the globe. San Francisco’s own Tango No. 9 is undoubtedly among the finest exemplars of the art form worldwide, plying their trade here at home with complete dedication for fifteen years and more… Today’s engagement, T9’s sixth appearance on the Bird & Beckett stage, is anticipated with particular pleasure and excitement…Â Isabel Douglass, an infinitely soulful and lovely accordionist of immense versatility, found herself a few seasons ago drawn to the road as a member of Rupa and the April Fishes, and we’ve since mourned her absence from the…
Read MoreThursday, May 24 – 7:00 pm The Monthly Eminent Authors’ Birthdays Open Reading a long-standing Bird & Beckett tradition, recurring on the fourth Thursday of each month Have a favorite writer born in May? Come down to Bird & Beckett this Thursday evening to share aloud a bit of his or her work with fellow devotees of the book. We have long lists of fine writers and their birth months, if you’d care to come down and take a look to see who might be a likely candidate for your attention. And please, we hope you’ll endeavor to read to us from a real book if humanly possible. Bird & Beckett is, after all, a book store and we particularly treasure that lovely form in which writing has been shared since the good blacksmith Gutenberg invented movable type. Consider too, that if you buy a book to take home, it…
Read MoreSunday, May 20 – 2:00 pm The Rix Journal: Small-Town Vermont to Gold Rush era San Francisco Historian Lynn Bonfield discusses the document and her work Lynn Bonield, former director of the San Francisco Labor Archives, now divides her time between Glen Park and Peachham, Vermont, where she was first drawn by the story of the Rix family — having chanced in 1972 upon the unique Gold Rush era journal of husband and wife Alfred and Chastina Rix among uncatalogued materials in the stacks at the San Francisco Historical Society. The journal has just recently been beautifully published as New England to Gold Rush California: The Journal of Alfred and Chastina W. Rix, 1849-1854, edited with commentary by Lynn, from the Arthur W. Clark Co. imprint of the Unversity of Oklahoma Press. Beginning on their wedding day in Peacham on July 29, 1849, Alfred and Chastina kept a dual journal, alternating the task of bringing it up to…
Read MoreThursday, May 17 – 7 pm “Amerarcana 2012″ Bird & Beckett’s Annual Literary Journal A Reading & Celebration! The 3rd issue of our own “little magazine” has arrived, and it’s exquisite in content and design, just like the first two! Come & get it at the AMERARCANA 2012 RELEASE READING: Thursday, May 17th from 7:00 pm — with readings by contributors Bill Berkson, Duncan McNaughton, David Meltzer, Jackson Meazle, Jason Morris, Erik Noonan, Cedar Sigo, Tisa Walden & editor Nick Whittington. Less likely to appear are Justin Desmangles, Joanne Kyger, Sarah Menefee, Jeffrey Joe Nelson, Will Skinker & Colter Jacobsen. Certain not to appear is Rodrigo Lira, as he no longer walks this earth, but who knows, perhaps his translators Rodrigo Olavarria & Thomas Rothe will show… Regardless, it’s sure to be a grand event, with wine & words aplenty. Amerarcana is a proud production of the Bird & Beckett Cultural…
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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
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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
