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!
Ten musicians on the Bird & Beckett stage tonight! Ten musicians to pay! Sliding scale $10-40 cover charge requested. No reservations. No comps. Only 30 seats! Doors open at 7:15. BYOB.GRUPO OKÃN TOYÉ is an Afro Cuban folkloric troupe dedicated to learning, performing and preserving the musical traditions specifically from Matanzas, Cuba! The group is co-directed and managed by Ahkeel Mestayer and Toribio Villamil, most recently the director of Grupo AfroCuba de Matanzas in Cuba. Personnel: Yaimel Villamil Ahkeel Mestayer Christelle Durandy Julio Areas Orlando Torriente Toby Gaster Emilio Davalos Jacki Corona Genesie Reinoso Ceferino Vergara-Tucker
Read MoreThis latest historic match-up between kaleidoscopic pianist Ira Kamin and drummer PC Muñoz is a celebration of their new album, “St. Anne’s Bandâ€, available exclusively on bandcamp. Come experience the battle in person! $10-20 sliding scale cover charge, to help us pay the musicians a guaranteed fair wage! byob
Read MoreJohn Calloway, flute & percussion Tony Stead, piano Ollie Dudek, bass Brian Andres, drums  $20 cash cover charge at the door, please! BYOB. For a reservation, call 415-586-3733. Reservations are held until showtime. 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 an almost 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 &…
Read MoreShe’s back! Come hear the boogie woogie & blues maven Wendy DeWitt blow the house down with her partner Kirk Harwood on drums and the inestimable blues guitarist Takezo Takeda, the Soul Man from Japan! BYOB and a twenty for the trio! Reservations, call 415-586-3733 Here’s the trio’s last Bird & Beckett show! Check it out… Wendy caught the attention of Western Swing Hall of Famer Tommy Thomsen (Sonoma) at age 10, and hasn’t stopped since. Former pianist for Hank Ballard and Steve Freund, Wendy has also played with Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, Charlie Musselwhite, Otis Rush and Jimmy Thackery. She tours national and international festivals and produces the annual Queens of Boogie Woogie and San Francisco International Boogie Woogie Festival, which draws artists from around the world. “All the cool kids already know DeWitt is one smoking boogie woogie piano/organ gal and it’s time for the word to…
Read MoreBird & Beckett presents featured poets and an open mic on the first Thursday of each month, hosted by Michael Koch and Jerry Ferraz. James Cagney’s second poetry collection, Martian: The Saint of Loneliness is the winner of the 2021 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. His first, Black Steel Magnolias In The Hour Of Chaos Theory won the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award in 2018. Both titles are available from Nomadic Press. For more information, please visit JamesCagneypoet.com. Tureeda Mikell, is an Oakland native, award winning poet, MoAD 2022 Poet in Residence, original Black Panther alum, griot, story medicine woman, Qi Reader, author, and educator. She has published over 70 at-risk student anthologies from 5 bay area counties. Hailed, activist for holism hell bent on asserting life, her works have been published and or traveled from Africa, France, UK, Australia, Japan, and China. Her book, Synchronicity:…
Read MoreVince Lateano, drums Peter Barshay, bass Ben Stolorow, piano All jazz players welcome to take the stage. Or just come to listen. No cover charge. If you can’t make it into the shop, you can catch the live stream on our Facebook page or YouTube channel. Your donations to help pay the trio and support the stream are much appreciated! Bird & Beckett adheres to the guaranteed fair wage standard promoted by the Independent Musicians Alliance.
Read MoreGerald Beckett, flute Michael Gold, saxophone Greg Jacobs, piano Carl Herder, bass Greg German, drums $25 cover charge; byob Reservations, call 415-586-3733 Streamed live on our YouTube channel and Facebook page. Born and raised in Texas, flutist Gerald Beckett is a stalwart of the San Francisco music scene. Eight years of classical training at the San Francisco Conservatory, combined with extensive jazz studies with some of the leading teachers in the Bay Area, has left Beckett with a firm command of both his instrument and the jazz idiom. About his most recent CD, his sixth, Downbeat Magazine had this to say: A common juke-joint sound is pervasive on several of flutist Gerald Beckett’s compositions—particularly on “Down Low,†“Club Raven†and “Shacktown.†Each tune has a rollicking mood that resonates with a gut-bucket blues feeling. But there are other sounds on MOOD, and none more chocked with hard-bop ingredients than “Minor…
Read MoreShake off the workweek with a happy hour or two in the company of veteran drummer Tony Johnson and his merry crew — Bob Kenmotsu on tenor saxophone, Keith Saunders on piano and Matt Montgomery on upright bass. Two solid sets of straight ahead jazz & bebop, swing & bossa nova. Tony has been plying his trade in San Francisco since he immigrated from Australia in 1959. Straight off, he was busy in the clubs and on the road — and recorded a memorable album live at The Cellar on Grant Avenue in North Beach in 1960 with vocalist Bev Kelly, in the company of saxophonist Pony Poindexter. He’s never stopped since. BYOB and a twenty for the band! Can’t make it to the show? On Fridays, we’ll be streaming just the second set, starting at about 7pm. To hear the first set, you’ll need to brave the elements and…
Read MoreAll open mic! Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84350265713?pwd=eE84V3BYdWxiSFBHNHhmdUt1WTUzdz09 Meeting ID: 843 5026 5713 Passcode: 244211
Read MoreTimothy Orr•drums/percussion Mark Clifford•vibraphone Safa Shokrai•double bass Max Judelson•double bass Heikki “Mike” Koskinen•e-trumpet/recorder Joshua Marshall•tenor saxophone Rent Romus•alto saxophone $25-35 sliding scale to support these seven musicians! byob reservations: 415-586-3733 live stream (please donate) on the Bird & Beckett YouTube channel and Facebook page. Rent Romus’ Life’s Blood Ensemble pays tribute as well as brings to light, reinvents, deconstructs, and delves into the deep realms of their collective vision. Their repertoire features original composition and contemporary local and international composers while exploring the influences and inspirations from free improvisation, jazz, folk, and world. This performance @ the iconic Bird & Beckett Books will feature new music, some of which will be debuted as part of a new recording project “In the Spirit”. more information: http://romus.net/lifesblood.html https://youtu.be/pfST5WMY2dM https://soundcloud.com/rent-romus/manala-demo Rent Romus is a saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist, composer, bandleader, music producer, and community activist. Since 1988, his work on the saxophone has been dubbed “ferocious 
Read Moredevorah major, San Francisco’s third Poet Laureate (2002-2004), is an award-winning poet and fiction writer, a creative non-fiction writer, performer, editor, and part-time senior adjunct professor at California College of the Arts. She was poet-in-residence of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco for 28 years. devorah has toured Africa, the Caribbean, South America, Europe, and all over the United States performing her poetry and speaking on panels focused on African-American poetry, Beat poetry, and poetry of resistance. She is the author of two novels and six books of poetry. Her fifth book of poetry, and then we became was published by City Lights in 2016 and her sixth, Califa’s Daughter was published by Willow Books in 2020. Dee Allen is an African-Italian performance poet based in Oakland, California U.S.A. Allen is active in creative writing and spoken word since the early 1990s. Under POOR Press, he has published four…
Read MoreGet ready for a Hammond Organ Party with the Wayne De La Cruz Organ Trio with Tony Alvis, saxophone and Mark Lee, drums. $20 cash cover charge. BYOB. Reservations, call 415-586-3733 Doors open at 7:20. Can’t make it to the shop tonight? Donate and take in the show through the live stream on our YouTube channel or Facebook page. Wayne De La Cruz started on drums at age 9, moving on to vibes in middle school and organ in high school. A Baldwin spinet organ, it didn’t have the sound Wayne had in mind, a sound he remembered from the time his father took him to hear Ray Charles in 1968, when Billy Preston was at the keys of a Hammond B-3. In 1973, Wayne began his professional career, playing his first paying gig on Hammond organ at the age of 16. The Baldwin had been traded in for a…
Read MoreGuitarist Scott Foster carries all the twenty years’ tradition of jazz in the bookshop! And beginning with this January 2023 third-Friday date, he returns our 2-1/2 hour Friday jazz “happy hour” to its original start time of 5:30pm. Henceforth, on Fridays you’ll find jazz in the bookshop from 5:30 to 8:00pm every week! Lose the tensions of the work week at Bird & Beckett with old and new friends. BYOB and a twenty for the band! (Sundays, you’ll often find live music with a 5pm start time — check our calendar. Saturdays and other weeknights, you can generally count on a 7:30pm start with doors opening 10 minutes before showtime – check our calendar for that, too! Reservations are gladly taken by phone – 415-586-3733 – for the evening shows. We don’t generally take reservations for the Friday and Sunday shows unless you have a specific need for a chair.) …
Read MoreIbn Khaldun, 14th century diplomat, teacher, judge, visionary.  The archetypal polymath. The surfaces of his reputation are vast. He has been called the first historian, the first sociologist, the first economist. He has even been referred to as the inventor of the Laffer Curve. As much as all this may captivate our interest, the mystery of his character remains elusive. He is one of the most creative thinkers of all time, the architect of an intelligence we have yet to uncover… Walker Brents III has been illuminating Bird & Beckett audiences on a near-monthly basis for twenty years. His observations on poets, philosophers, myth, folklore and myriad other topics reveal a deep and perceptive intelligence that probes the universal in the particular, the entire cosmos in the raindrop. Indulge your curiosity and tune in! At the appointed hour, you’ll find Walker’s 90-minute live stream in the video window at the upper right…
Read MoreThe 1980s were formative years for Ron Jackson, studying guitar at Berklee School of Music, spending two years in Paris picking up the electric bass, returning to New York and the jazz guitar in 1987 and touring North America and Europe. In 1991, at age 27, he released his debut album as a leader, “A Guitar Thing,” with collaborators including Benny Green, Lonnie Plaxico and Cecil Brooks III. In the ensuing three decades, nine albums have followed as he’s grown in skill, experience and stature. In the 1990s, he was a member of a trio led by Rufus Reid as well as Randy Weston’s group. Since that time, a master of the six, seven and twelve string guitars, he’s played regularly in New York City at jazz clubs like Birdland, Iridium, 55 Bar and the Blue Note, and he’s worked with Oliver Lake, James Spaulding, Jimmy McGriff, Melvin Rhyne, Lonnie…
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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