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!
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But nothing beats being in the room with the music & the musicians!
Friday, September 2nd, 5:30 to 8:00 pm jazz in the bookshop Every Friday Evening It’s the first Friday of the month, and that means it’s time for Don Prell’s SeaBop Ensemble! Next Friday (the second Friday of the month) we host The Jimmy Ryan Quintet. Bird & Beckett’s Friday jazz sessions have been going on since 2002 and show no signs of slowing down… For each SeaBop date, Don Prell assembles the band from a retinue of top-knotch musicians steeped in the bebop and west coast jazz that we love so well… For Sept. 2nd, Don has concocted a SeaBop trio configuration of guitar, piano and bass — no drums or horns — with Scott Foster, guitar; Michael Parsons, piano; and Don himself on bass. Don always puts a lot of effort into conceiving and rehearsing the particular configuration of musicians/instrumentation and the set list itself. We’ll be excited to…
Read MoreMonday, August 29th, 7:00 pm Bill Berkson and Duncan McNaughton POETS! Bill Berkson and Duncan McNaughton are contemporaries, friends and widely respected literary figures. In addition to their writings (more than a dozen books of poetry by Duncan since 1961, and a like number of volumes of art writing, poetry and other material by Bill beginning in about the same year), both have been long engaged through critical work and correspondence in furthering the understanding of artistic endeavor. Both have been important teachers in the Bay Area as well– Duncan founded the innovative and highly influential Poetics Program at New College in 1965 and directed it until 1990; and Bill was a key faculty member at the renowned San Francisco Art Institute from 1984 to 2008. Both have roots on the east coast — Bill was born in New York in 1939;…
Read MoreSunday, September 4th, 5:30 & 6:30 pm – two sets Anthony Brown & Friends which way west? Sunday concert series Percussionist Anthony Brown, born of an African-American/Native American father and a Japanese mother, is a mainstay in a hugely influential movement that started locally three decades ago, as a handful of talented Asian-American musicians began to develop innovative approaches to jazz composition, instrumentation and performance. After playing as a youth in pop and R&B bands and working in military choruses and jazz settings, Anthony co-founded with bassist Mark Izu and trumpeter George Sams the San Francisco-based ensemble known as United Front– which proceeded to blaze the way along a path that has led to the Asian-American Jazz Orchestra and related projects by colleagues Jon Jang, Francis Wong, Melecio Magdaluyo and many others. Today at Bird & Beckett, Anthony, on drumset and percussion, is joined in a trio by Mark Izu…
Read MoreSunday, August 28th, 2:30 pm Walker Brents III’s Flintlock Tales Walker talks! quite a lot! and most interestingly on the last Sunday of each month at Bird & Beckett, barring the summer months– when he rambles the west to make sure the roads still lead on… and, thus far, they have. For many many years now, Walker has been concocting tales of Flintlock, a sharp-clawed and unpredictable cat, given to whims of its own brought to a certain hard-etched definition in the cyclone of a hard and, when you come down to it, beautiful landscape– just the kind of landscape his creator has taken in in a long youth and adolscence in the dusty west, and those repeated seasonal rambles… Flintlock evokes a certain sense of recognition– a certain sharp pain of realization… and a certain amusement mixed with astonishment. Come hear, y’all…
Read MoreJazz: there’s no stopping now! San Francisco holds its own as one of the key hubs of jazz in America, and we’re crazy for it in all its permutations Friday, August 26th, 5:30 to 8:00 pm The 230 Jones Street, Local 6 Literary Jazz Band With vocalist Dorothy Lefkovits adding her own sweet sound, this is the band assembled by Glen Park tenor player Chuck Peterson with colleagues he’s played with for decades. Named in tribute to the Musicians Union and its historic (1925-1998) home in the theatre district, this group’s members are all seasoned professionals, working in the business since the early 1950s. Chuck Peterson, tenor sax and flute; Howard Dudune, tenor sax and clarinet; Glen Deardorff, guitar; Dean Reilly, bass; and Tony Johnson, drums. This band, aka “The Chuck Peterson Quintet” plays at Bird & Beckett on the fourth Friday of each month. Tyrone Dorian subs for Glen…
Read MorePOETS! Three Readings of Note Bird & Beckett continues to offer one of the liveliest poetry scenes of any bookshop in town– in this City of Poets! Monday, August 29th, 7:00 pm Bill Berkson and Duncan McNaughton Bill and Duncan are contemporaries, friends and widely respected literary figures. In addition to their writings (more than a dozen books of poetry by Duncan since 1961, and a like number of volumes of art writing, poetry and other material by Bill beginning in about the same year), both have been long engaged through critical work and correspondence in furthering the understanding of artistic endeavor. Both have been important teachers in the Bay Area as well– Duncan founded the innovative and highly influential Poetics Program at New College in 1965 and directed it until 1990; and Bill was a key faculty member at the renowned San Francisco Art Institute from 1984 to 2008.…
Read MoreOutfest! Jazz on the Avant Side Every Sunday in August Sunday, August 21st, 4:30 & 5:30 (two sets) Time is Now, Not Money featuring Kasey Knudsen, sax Kasey Knudsen has been taking the avant garde jazz scene by storm since her graduation from Berklee School of Music ten years ago. Today, she’s featured on sax with an ensemble that is returning for its third performance at Bird & Beckett — “Time Is Now, Not Money” — led by bassist Bishu Chatterjee. Bishu’s a regular on our Friday evening straight-ahead jazz series, and has a number of side projects that range across a wide imaginative terrain. One such project is the fusion of his native Bengali musical roots with his adopted American jazz base, called “Bengal and Beyond.”  Another of Bishu’s explorations, embodied in the ensemble called “Time is Now, Not Money,” (which can be heard at this link), is typically…
Read MoreSunday afternoon Poet’s salon Sunday, August 21st, 2:30 pm Megan Harlan Megan’s recent collection of poems, Mapmaking, won the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry, and her poems have been heard on the PBS News Hour’s Poetry Series and published in numerous journals. She has also had short stories, travel features and book reviews widely published in journals and in the New York Times, the SF Chronicle, Elle, Time Out New York , and more. Now a resident of Berkeley, where she lives with her husband and young son, Megan was born in Vermont and grew up in Saudi Arabia, Colombia, London, Houston, Alaska and the Bay Area. Speaking of her poetry and fiction, and of her journalistic work, she says, “as I move from the structured world of ledes and deadlines to the wilder spaces of creative writing, it’s exhilarating (and sometimes terrifying). I leave character and story, narrative shapes…
Read Morejazz in the bookshop every friday, 5:30 to 8:00! Friday, August 19 Don Prell / Scott Foster Duo Guitarist Scott Foster and bassist Don Prell have been mainstays of the Friday evening jazz scene at Bird & Beckett since its start in October of 2002 — nine short years ago! 450+ consecutive Fridays of live jazz without missing a beat… due largely to Don’s unflagging energy and infectious enthusiasm and in no small part to Scott’s effortless artistry on the guitar. Both swear that Bird & Beckett is one of the best gigs in town, largely because of the terrific audience that gathers week after week to relax, enjoy themselves and socialize, and to hear them play. Consummate musicians, doing what they love to do. Come out and start the weekend right…
Read MoreParis & Points Further Out! Sunday, August 14: Paris Portraits at 2:30 / Outfest! at 4:30 Gertrude Stein’s Circle evoked in a monologue based on Harriet Lane Levy’s Paris Portraits Manning / Pilorz combo featured in our Outfest! sequence of “free jazz” concerts Get your hiking on Mt. Tam done early, and let Stern Grove slide this week, ’cause we’ve got a couple things you shouldn’t miss… All the town’s agog about the Stein Collection exhibit at SFMOMA, the Picasso exhibit at the De Young, the Stein exhibit at the Jewish Museum… and along comes Harriet Lane Levy, who traveled with Alice B. Toklas to Paris in 1907 to join the little crowd of California ex-pats revolving around the salons of Gertrude, Leo & Michael Stein. By her own account, Gertrude soon set to the task of trying to get Harriet to go home, and leave Alice with her! In…
Read MorePoet Paula Hackett with pianist Connie Crothers Monday, August 15th – 7:00 pm POETS! 1st & 3rd Monday of each month Featured readers followed by an open mic Jerry Ferraz hosts Paula Hackett writes from a long, ongoing love affair with literature and jazz both. Her father was a noted novelist, and at a young age, growing up in Berkeley, Paula and her brother John became avid devotees of the American popular song, particularly as mediated through the work of the great jazz instrumentalists of the 50s and 60s. Paula attended SFSU in the late 70s and 80s, coming under the sway of the African-American intellectual and activist Angela Davis, jazz historian and writer Grover Sales and the poet John Beecher. While there, Paula gave a poem to jazz saxophonist John Handy, who in return gave her some of his compositions and set her the task of writing lyrics to…
Read MoreFriday, August 12th, 5:30-8:00 pm The Jimmy Ryan Quintet jazz in the bookshop every Friday! If it’s the second Friday of the month, it’s time for the Jimmy Ryan Quintet, with Scott Foster on guitar– joined this week by subs Danny Brown on sax, Jay Sanders on trumpet and Charles Thomas on bass. Regular quintet members Henry Hung, Danny Grewen and Bishu Chatterjee are attending to other gigs, but will return in September… Jimmy’s been a mainstay of Bird & Beckett’s Friday evening “jazz in the bookshop” series since 2002, leading a terrific aggregation of musicians steeped in bop on the second Friday of each month. Jimmy started on the drums in L.A. in the 1950s, and reached the San Francisco jazz scene in the early 1960s. After a lengthy hiatus from the music starting in the early 70s well into the 90s, he agreed to fill in on drums…
Read MoreToday! OutFest Jazz + 2 Poetry Readings Sunday, August 7th, 4:30 & 5:30 pm (two sets) OUTFEST! The second in our five-Sunday sequence of concerts presenting freely improvised “jazz on the avant side” Jim Ryan’s Forward Energy plays two sets of intensely improvised music as part of our five-Sunday run of “free jazz” performances, organized by Bird & Beckett in conjunction with Outsound Presents. Forward Energy comprises Jim Ryan on sax, flute and trumpet; Outsound’s own Rent Romus on saxes; Scott R. Looney on piano; Eric Marshall on bass and Tim Orr on drums. A philosopher by academic training and a prolific author, Ryan took up music during the late 1960s while living in Paris. Already a fan of bebop, and a nascent bohemian in circles that included William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, he came under the sway of expatriate avant-garde jazz artists, including Archie Shepp, Anthony Braxton, the Art…
Read MoreSunday, August 7th Poets double header (split by jazz!) Two major poetry readings this Sunday, at 2:00 and at 7:00– At 2 pm, a 2-hour showcase of poets gathering under the banner of Philippine American Writers & Artists, Inc. Barbara Jane Reyes hosts Tina Bartolome, Bonne Marie Bautista, G. Justin Hulog, Cheena Marie Lo and Michael Medrano. TINA BARTOLOME is a San Francisco native and daughter of immigrants from the Philippines and Switzerland. Her solidarity with people’s struggles for self-determination has taken her to the Philippines, Cuba and GuÃ¥han (Guam) with a steady commitment to return to working class neighborhoods in San Francisco and Oakland and facilitate radical spaces for young people to develop leadership and artistic voice for making social change. BONNE MARIE BAUTISTA was born in Daly City, raised in Quezon City, Philippines and grew up in San Francisco. She earned a BA in English Literature from Mills…
Read MoreFriday & Saturday Jazz and more jazz! Friday, August 5th, 5:30 to 8:00 pm jazz in the bookshop This week our regular Friday evening weekly jazz party continues unabated, as Don Prell’s Seabop Ensemble, our regular first-Friday-of-the-month group, holds forth pulling out tunes associated with Horace Silver, Dexter Gordon, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Charlie Parker and all the cats that made modern jazz modern!  Jerry Logas is on saxes, clarinet and flute; Michael Parsons is on piano; and Chris Bjorkbom is on drums — all anchored and inspired by the experience and vitality that Don Prell brings to the bass as he continues a long career rooted in his early years on the Los Angeles jazz scene of the 1950s, when he was a key member of the Bud Shank Quartet… Saturday, August 6th, 7:00 to 9:00 pm a benefit for Global Citizen Year Mitchell Mankin and friends play jazz…
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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.
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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
