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!
The Chris Trinidad Trio brings its sounds to Bird and Beckett this Saturday night, playing Chris’s book of tunes spanning a range of Iridium Records releases including Common Themes, Certain Times, and Chant Triptych II. His compositions are inspired by such writers as Ralph Towner, Pat Metheny, Jack DeJohnette, Jan Garbarek, Bill Evans, Brad Turner, Chris Gestrin, and Chris Tarry and draw ideas from genres as disparate as Cuban Timba, Original Pilipino Music, Gregorian Chant, and British Progressive Rock. A warm evening of delectable sonic sustenance is promised, featuring: Chris Trinidad, bass guitar + synth bass Bob Crawford, piano + melodica Isaac Schwartz, drum set $20 cover charge; byob. Reservations, call 415-586-3733.
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Todd Dickow – sax. Joel Behrman – trumpet. Benny Watson – piano. John Donnelly – bass. Greg Gotelli – drums. $20 cover charge; byob. Reservations, call 415-586-3733. The SF Jazz Quintet, helmed by drummer Greg Gotelli, brings to you the classic composers of hard bop era as well as the best of the Great American Songbook’s ballads. Performing the compositions of Sonny Clark, Lee Morgan, Tadd Dameron, Kenny Dorham, and Clifford Brown to name but a few, the SF Jazz Quintet delivers an exciting, powerfully rhythmic, horn driven ensemble sound. Their performance returns to the classic sounds that made this music some of the greatest, most loved jazz in the genre’s long history. Tonight’s iteration of his San Francisco Quintet includes formidable horn players including saxophonist Todd Dickow and trumpeter Berhman fronting the rhythm section of pianist Benny Watson, bassist John Donnelly and Greg on the drum kit. Todd Dickow’s…
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Guitarist Scott Foster’s quartet with tenor saxophonist Bob Kenmotsu, bassist John Wiitala and drummer Dan Foltz will be playing repertoire exclusively from the collaboration between Sonny Rollins and Jim Hall — music from the album “the Bridge” and beyond. What a treat! It’s getting to be a lot like Christmas! Scott weighs in: “This is a really exciting line up and music that is at the core of everything I love about jazz. I am sure it will bring joy to audiences and most certainly to me. Can’t wait.” Neither can we! Bring a twenty for the band and whatever you might want to sip during the show. Reserve a seat! Call the shop during store hours (Tuesday to Sunday, noon to six) at 415-586-3733. If you reserve, be sure to show up by showtime or we’ll release the seat if someone needs one… And let us know if you…
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POSTPONED TO 1/16 due to technical difficulties Antonin Artaud, charismatic silent movie actor, visionary dramatic theorist, and inspired prophet, was driven, by an increasingly troubled mind, in the years just prior to the second world war, to undertake a quixotic voyage to Mexico, in search of an elemental connection to the life of the earth and the sky. Much of what actually happened there is unknown, but in the years that followed, including other voyages and descents in and out of madness, his experiences and imaginations became the source of a great many poetic documents, which are available to us, and stand alone as priceless testimonies of a strange and gifted mind. On 10 January 1936, the poet, actor, and dramatic theorist, Antonin Artaud departed Europe on a journey to Mexico that would take him from the streets, cafés, and lecture halls of Mexico City to the remote mountains of…
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Josh Fineberg began his musical training at 4 years old with western classical and jazz on piano and bass in New York City. He was hailed as a prodigy and performed in jazz venues and concert halls across the New York area. In his teens, Josh fell in love with the music of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and Pandit Nikhil Banerjee, and shifted his focus to sitar and Hindustani music while pursuing his Bachelor’s degree from New England Conservatory. Josh is a practitioner of the Maihar Gharana (school of playing) and has earned the love and respect of connoisseurs of Hindustani music, as well art-music communities around the world. Josh has learned with Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Ustad Aashish Khan and Sri Alam Khan, among others. He has performed extensively at festivals and concert halls in the USA, Canada, Europe and India and has recorded albums alongside some of the…
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Make it a habit! The Vince Lateano Trio plays the third Sunday of every month at Bird & Beckett! Tell your friends to meet you at San Francisco’s southernmost jazz joint & literary parlor! Vince is a 60-year veteran of the San Francisco jazz scene. Born, raised and introduced to jazz in Herb Caen’s home town of Sacramento, Vince rousted out of the Army in 1965 while the Vietnam War exploded. He immediately became a fixture on the local jazz scene, playing all the clubs in North Beach and all the concentric circles beyond, traveling the country with Woody Herman, perched on the drum throne in Cal Tjader’s final quartet in the early 1970s, leading the Jazz at Pearls house trio in the 1990s, running the jam session at the Dogpatch Saloon in the twenty-aughts and the doghouse jam at the Seven Mile House in the twenty-teens, and holding down…
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Ben Goldberg, clarinet. Myra Melford, piano. Ben Davis, cello. Jordan Glenn, drums. $25 cover charge; byob. Cash or venmo at the door, please. Reservations, call 415-586-3733. These four much admired musicians have not played together before, so no one can really know what’s going to happen. But individually and in every musical situation each always can be relied on to do their absolute best with logic and other forms of magic. Songs by people in the band and an expansive horizon of possibility are in store for the listener as well as for the performers. “Melford can be rhythmic, romantic, stoic, wry, and lusty but most of all daring — all in one tune. More importantly she‘s reconnected music to motion, leaving today‘s straightlaced young men in suits, who have dominated recent jazz, in her wake.” –Stuart Nicholson, The London Observer.
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Macy Blackman, piano Steve Reid, bass Larry Vann, drums $20 cover charge; byob. Musicians steeped in New Orleans R&B and soul, and all the New Orleans traditions from Jelly Roll Morton to Fats Domino, Professor Longhair, Doctor John, the Nevilles, the Wild Tchapatoulas, Irma Thomas…the list is long and rich, and they’re happy to roll out the songs. Macy himself is a marvel of curmudgeonly charm and talent. Actually, he just seems curmudgeonly. He’s really quite a cheerful fellow, when you stop to think about it!
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Friday, December 13th – 6-8pm
Eric & the In Crowd
celebrate the tunes of
Harold Arlen and Irving Berlin
Eric Shifrin, piano and vocals. Simon Planting, bass. Randy Lee Odell, drums. $20 suggested donation, byob. Teens and students, $10. Children, free All year long in 2024, piano professor Eric Shifrin has been bringing the In Crowd on the second Friday of each month to celebrate a few of the great songwriters who have composed the tunes that we now consider jazz standards. He’s been working his way down the alphabet from Z to A. Tonight, the series concludes with a spotlight on the great Irving Berlin and Harold Arlen. Come hear what the fuss is all about!
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David Ladensohn presents his book, Fly-Fishing with Leonardo da Vinci. Written with the literate fly-fisher in mind, Ladensohn’s book is equally interesting and entertaining to people interested in Leonardo, the flesh and blood man: a gay, God-believing but not really Church-believing, intensely science-obsessed polymath whose art was as much about his interest in optics and physicality as it is about subject matter. Combining his admiration for Leonardo da Vinci’s art with his extensive knowledge of fly-fishing, David discovered a unique connection between da Vinci’s water dynamics expertise demonstrating that he would make the ideal fly-fishing guide.
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VirtualPoets! Kim Shuck hosts featured poets David Gorin and Caroline Goodwin and the open mic that follows. Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84350265713?pwd=eE84V3BYdWxiSFBHNHhmdUt1WTUzdz09 Meeting ID: 843 5026 5713 Passcode: 244211 David Gorin is the author of To a Distant Country, selected by Jennifer Chang for the Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship and forthcoming in 2025. His writing received the 2023 Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America and has been supported by MacDowell and Millay Arts. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a BA, MA, and MPhil in English Literature from Yale University. In recent years he has taught creative writing and literature at the Pratt Institute, Deep Springs College, Stanford Continuing Studies, Eastern Correctional Facility (via the Bard Prison Initiative), and Yale. He is the curator of the WAVEMACHINE poetry + performance series in San Francisco. Follow him on Instagram @davidgorin and via www.davidgorin.net. Caroline Goodwin’s recent books are…
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Independent reporter Denise Sullivan brings the SF Lives series to Bird & Beckett for a Sunday morning livestream. This month’s guest is poet, movement worker, and educator, Tongo Eisen-Martin. Use the video screen at the top of our website homepage to access the stream. Limited in person seating available. Call the shop at 415-586-3733. Eisen-Martin’s curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. His book titled, “Someone’s Dead Already” was nominated for a California Book Award. His book “Heaven Is All Goodbyes” was published by the City Lights Pocket Poets series, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and won a California Book Award and an American Book Award. He is San Francisco’s eighth poet laureate and he is co-founder and editor at Black Freighter Press. The SFLives Project, a series of candid conversations with San Francisco’s artists,…
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$30 cover Cash or Venmo at the door. BYOB. The tix are all called for at this point, but standing room will be available day of show at $20 per person on a first-come, first-served basis. So join the line and take your chances! Bundle up! Join us for a celebration of the Crooked Jades’ 30th Anniversary! It’s the last concert in 2024 for this amazing old-time band, and we’re delighted to host it! Like Alfred Nobel’s little blast palace in the park, the Jades are a part of Glen Park history! The Crooked Jades’ roots are in Glen Park, where Jades leader and co-founder Jeff Kazor lived for 20 years down the block above Hal & Susan’s hardware store — now sadly gone. In the early days of the band, the core trio of Jeff, Lisa Berman and Erik Pearson took their music down to the street on the…
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John Calloway, flutes Jordan Samuels, guitar Chris Trinidad, bass Emilio Davalos, percussion Plus guests Angie Doctor and Conrad Benedicto $25 cover charge; byob San Francisco native flautist, composer and arranger Dr. John Calloway has spent the last four decades in the Bay Area as one of the vanguard flute players known nationally in Latin jazz, jazz and Afro-Latino music. Since returning to the Bay Area in the mid 1980s after a stint in New York, John has performed with Omar Sosa, Israel “Cachao” Lopez, Rebeca Mauleon, Marcus Shelby, Jesus Diaz, Wayne Wallace, Kularts and Quijerema, and has had a 50-year working collaborative relationship with Bay Area legend John Santos. He has performed internationally in Cuba, Chile, Venezuela, Europe, Singapore and the Philippines; he has composed and arranged music for GRAMMY nominated projects and for films, including “Hemingway & Gelhorn;” and he won an EMMY award in 2019 for his composition…
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Sheila Smith McKoy and Joan Gelfand read their work; an open mic follows, hosted by Michael Koch. No charge, though your contributions help augment the small honorarium we’re able to offer the poets. byob. Sheila Smith McKoy, Ph.D. is an award-winning poet, fiction writer and filmmaker. She is the recipient of the 2020 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Prize in poetry. Her full-length poetry collection, The Bones Beneath (Black Lawrence Press, 2024) is described as “haunting.” She is also co-author of One Window’s Light: A Haiku Collection, a collaboration of five Black poets; the collection won the 2017 Haiku Society of America’s Merit Book Award for best haiku anthology. Smith McKoy has also written, produced, directed or served as executive producer for four documentary films, including Maama Watali and Luwero: A Conversation about War, Peace and Gender (2017). She is both a Pulitzer Prize and Pushcart Prize nominated poet. Since 1994,…
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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
Call us at (415) 586-3733 to find out how else you might lend your support.
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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
