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!
Kim Shuck, San Francisco Poet Laureate Emirtus, hosts poetry readings on Zoom twice a month. The second Monday of each month, there are featured readers followed by an open mic. The fourth Sunday of each month, it’s all open mic. Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84350265713?pwd=eE84V3BYdWxiSFBHNHhmdUt1WTUzdz09 Meeting ID: 843 5026 5713 Passcode: 244211 This month, the featured readers are Tehmina Khan and Tureeda Mikell. Tehmina Khan is a daughter of Indian immigrant scientists who has spent her adult life writing, teaching, resisting, and mothering. She has taught science to preschoolers, citizenship to octogenarians, and poetry translation to elementary school students; she now teaches College Writing at UC Berkeley and Interdisciplinary Studies at City College of San Francisco, where she defends everyone’s right to a quality education. Her work has been published in Poets11, Written Here, OccuPoetry, CCSF Forum Magazine, Civil Liberties United, The City is Already Speaking, Essential Truths, and Muslim American…
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Ray Skjelbred, piano Marc Caparone, trumpet Nathan Tokunaga, clarinet Jeff Hamilton, drums $20 cover charge; byob. Reservations, call 415-586-3733. Ray Skjelbred’s roots are in the early Chicago piano styles, with an affinity for the likes of Jess Stacy, Joe Sullivan, Jimmy Yancey and Art Hodes, not to mention a host of others from Earl Hines, Mary Lou Williams and Thelonious Monk to more obscure players he can tell you much about, like Burt Bales, Zinky Cohn and George Zack. He’s a legend in the world of traditional jazz, frequently traveling the circuit from his base in Seattle. On this date, Marc and Jeff are long-time associates; just in his mid-teens, Nathan is someone Ray has only recently found to be more than amenable to his music. Read more on Ray at http://jazzhotbigstep.com Hear Ray play “Stompin’ em Down” at this link
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David Byrd, saxophone. Eli Goldlink, keyboards. Ollie Dudek, bass. Michael Spencer, drums. $20 cover charge; byob. Byrds of a Feather is an All-Star quartet with top ranking musicians, well loved and often heard in spots throughout Northern California, honoring the great jazz masters while doing it their own unique jazzreggae way. Besides its reggae inflection, Byrds of a Feather features leader David Byrd’s vocalese, upholding the grand tradition invented by Eddie Jefferson and made famous by King Pleasure and Jon Hendricks. Leader and saxophonist David Byrd hails from Chicago, and has been living in the Bay Area since 2012.
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Luke Westbrook, guitar. Matt Montgomery, bass. Smith Dobson, drums. $20 suggested cover for adults; Teens and music students, $5-10 sliding scale; kids free. Reservations, call the store at 415-586-3733. BYOB. This trio of musician friends has been performing together since 2007. These days the group plays repertoire mainly from the Great American Songbook (jazz standards) but every now and then you may hear something completely free or a choice pop tune from a bygone era. What makes the trio unique is the level of individual expressivity and musicianship that each player brings to the group. Guitarist Luke Westbrook’s years playing jazz, his serious inquiry into early Western polyphonic music and his affinity for the raw textural potential of acoustic and electric stringed instruments form the primary elements of his palette. Born in San Francisco in 1979, he began playing jazz early in the schools, participating in the Monterey Jazz Festival and…
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Drummer Vince Lateano, an MVP of the San Francisco jazz scene for decades, hosts a jam session at Bird & Beckett on the last Sunday of each month with Ben Stolorow on piano and Peter Barshay on bass, each uniquely talented and at home on our stage. If you want to hear that lovely trio without all the folks sitting in, you’ll need to plan to be here on the third Sunday of each month for their ongoing residency. The jam session always occupies that sweet spot between wonderful and vastly amusing. It needs your financial support if you can afford to be generous, as most of the seats are filled with players from whom no financial contribution is required, though we’re adamant about paying the trio. If you’ve been in the City thirty years (don’t call it Frisco!), you’ll remember Vince from Jazz at Pearl’s. Those with longer memories…
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Bassist and bandleader Dave Parker has been fielding highly charged ensembles in San Francisco for twenty years at least, picking and funding great musicians from the local pool to realize his vision. Featuring a strong, propulsive low end of trombone, baritone sax and bass, a cutting trumpet star, a virtuoso tenor sax player and supercharged drums and guitar, Dave’s septet digs deep into compositions by Mingus, Coleman, Coltrane, Dolphy and Morgan and isn’t shy to assay a Bach fugue. Long-time Glen Park residents will remember the smaller, but equally hard hitting combos Dave squeezed into the Red Rock Lounge and then Le P’tit Laurent on Friday nights starting two decades ago, and thousands of City dwellers and tourists have heard his bands at farmer’s markets and a variety of breweries, restaurants and clubs through the years. Once or twice a year, Dave brings the group into Bird & Beckett. It’s…
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Coming up this weekend: The Dave Parker Septet – 6/29, 7:30pm. Jam Session – 6/30, 5:00pm. Dave Parker brings his seven piece pile-driving chamber jazz band for a deep plunge into music by Mingus, Coltrane, Dolphy, Morgan, Coleman and Johann Sebastian Bach. Dave is a Medici when it comes to supporting the cats in his band. We would prefer socialism, but it’s not up to us. We do love the music and the musicians! Henry Hung on trumpet, Charles Hamilton on trombone, Hal Richards on tenor sax, Cory Wright on bari sax, Karl Evangelista on guitar, Valentino Peeps on drums… and Dave on bass, conceiving the approach, the band, the set list. The arrangements are arrived at in mutuality through the complicated process that jazz can be and the results are grand! Those of you who have been in the neighborhood more than twenty years may remember that before there…
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Joanna Mack, sitar, and Ferhan Qureshi, tabla, will be playing Raga in a traditional style – improvised music based on decades of classical training. This show will also be available on live stream, however, the focus will be toward the people in the room, so please come in person if you can! $20 cover charge; byob. To reserve a seat, please call the bookshop at 415-586-3733. Joanna Mack began her study of Indian Classical sitar in 1997. She spent eight years in Kolkata studying under Pandit Deepak Choudhury, and returned to the U.S. where she has had the honor to study under Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Sarodia Bruce Hamm and Sangeet Research Academy Guru Partha Chatterjee. She has been teaching and performing since 2006. Read more at JoannaMack.com Ferhan Najeeb Qureshi is a disciple of the legendary tabla maestro, Ustad Tari Khan. Prior to the training he continues to receive…
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Drummer Benny Amón left California, born & raised in Davis and trained in jazz, for New Orleans — where he lived and played for the ten years from 2011 to 2021, and where his love for the oldest jazz traditions was nurtured and flowered. In New Orleans, Benny performed regularly at Preservation Hall, Snug Harbor Jazz Bistro, The Palm Court Jazz Cafe, and aboard the Steamboat Natchez. Along the way, he has toured the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Japan, Belgium, Germany, Denmark and Sweden, performing in clubs and at jazz festivals that have included the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, the Monterey Jazz Festival, Festival international I LOVE JAZZ in Brazil and the New Mexico Jazz Festival. Benny is currently a Teaching Artist with the Preservation Hall Foundation and the Jazz In Schools program at Jazz at Lincoln Center. In the Bay Area, he regularly leads his own…
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Tenor saxophonist James Mahone gained a substantial and eminently well earned reputation as a co-founder of the jazz ensemble Black/Note, which won first prize at the John Coltrane Young Artist Competition in 1991 and recorded albums on World Stage (43rd and Degnan, 1991) Red Records (L.A. Underground, 1994), Columbia (Jungle Music, 1994) and Impulse (Nothin’ But the Swing, 1996). Black/Note had its roots in the jazz program at Cal State Northridge, where Mahone was studying alongside bassist Mark Anthony (Marcus) Shelby. In 1990, Shelby learned of Billy Higgins’ World Stage in Leimert Park, which had open jam sessions where Shelby met trumpeter Richard Grant. Black/Note, with Shelby, Grant, Mahone and drummer Willie Jones III, grew out of these sessions. They had their first gig as a unit in 1991. Among Black/Note’s first pianists were Eric Reed and Kenneth Crouch, but when they recorded a live date, released as 43rd and…
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The Lost Trio is closing out its thirty years of continuous collaboration, with saxophonist Phillip Greenlief decamping to Maine. For thirty years, Phillip and triomates Dan Seamans and Tom Hassett have been in constant rehearsal and performance, with many cds to their credit as well. But all things come to some sort of end. We imagine this current crop of shows won’t be the last time they perform together, but certainly the continuity is ending. Sheldon Brown, Beth Schenck and Darren Johnston will join the trio tonight to celebrate the kind of collaboration that the trio often sought out with these and other players that share the trio’s wavelength intellectually and intuitively, and most of all emotionally. Join us to celebrate. Help us pay the musicians. Bring $20 to $40 as a cover charge, so that they’ll all leave with some change jingling in their pockets as well as a…
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Not enough can be said about the songs Cole Porter gave us in his brilliant life. Eric Shifrin is devoting every second Friday to the music of the songwriters behind the jazz standards, and this week Cole Porter is the focus of two sets of great music played with a couple of his congenial and talented pals — bassist Simon Planting and drummer Mark Rosengarden. BYOB and a twenty for the band, and relax for a couple of hours at Bird & Beckett with live music to ease into the weekend.
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In Hugging My Father’s Ghost, Zack Rogow explores the mystery of the father he never knew. Lee Rogow was a drama critic, glamorous man-about-town in 1950s Manhattan, World War II Navy captain—and died tragically when Zack was only three. With sharp pathos and laugh-out-loud humor, Rogow shows his family caught between assimilation and pride in their immigrant identity. Ona Gritz’s new memoir, Everywhere I Look is about sisterhood, grief, true crime and family secrets. Helen Fremont calls it “profound and beautifully written.” Rachel Simon says, “This is a book that will take hold of your emotions—and, if you’re willing, change you.” Daniel Simpson’s poetry collection Inside the Invisible is, in Ellen Bass’s words, “…a book of faith. Of desire. Of a blind poet asking, So how shall I live inside the invisible? With close attention to detail,the use of dialogue, and curiosity about the limits of communication, [Simpson] interrogates life and chooses to…
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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." 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.
Due to lapses in tax filings during and post-pandemic, the BBCLP's status as a registered nonprofit was suspended at the beginning of April 2024 while we reapply, which is expected to take about six months. Donations made after April 1st will not be tax-deductible until nonprofit status is restored.
However, we continue to present a full slate of programming live music and poetry, and producing literary chapbooks, and we seek and welcome your continued financial support in the interim. If a tax-deduction is not a major reason for your support to date, we hope you'll continue to ride with us while we navigate these next several months.
Click on "donate" in the navigation bar above, drop off a check at the bookshop, or drop one in the mail 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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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
