Avotcja, poet and percussionist, dj, musicologist and historian, is the very soul of Bay Area culture. We say that without fear of contradiction. And Modúpue, a flexible ensemble of amazing musicians converging from multiple cultural and musical directions, is her vehicle to transcendence. Tune into her radio shows on KPFA and KPOO for the musical truth! And tell everybody to tell everybody, then get down here to Bird & Beckett to hear them work! This evening, Sandi Poindexter, violin; Francis Wong, saxophone; Heshima Mark Williams, bass; and Myron Cohen, drums, join Avotcja in Modúpue to bring the fire of Wordsong to Bird & Beckett. $25 cash cover charge; sliding scale available. BYOB. To reserve seats, call the bookshop at 415-586-3733. Catch the live stream on our YouTube channel or Facebook page if you can’t make it to the shop. But if the stream is where you’re taking it all in,…

Sam Reider, piano & accordion Mat Muntz, bass Shawn Meyer, drums A San Francisco native out of Urban High, home of our stalwart guitarist Scott Foster, Sam Reider was turning heads at a young age as a preternaturally gifted pianist. Still young, he’s now been long established in New York and the wider roots world where he’s well known and acclaimed as an accordionist leading his band, the Human Hands on the bluegrass circuit.  Read up on him here. Tonight, the trio will play originals, some Django Reinhardt and some bluegrass fiddle tunes. No fiddle, but an accordion will do the trick on those, just you wait and see! Videos of Sam’s work: “Petrichor“ “Skeleton Rag”

Rod Sudduth, tenor sax Ken Cook, piano Doug Miller, bass Dillon Vado, drums $20 cover charge, byob doors open 10 minutes before the show for a reservation, call the shop at 415-586-3733 Can’t make it to the shop? You’re missing a good thing, but at show time you can catch the live stream (and donate) here on our website, and on our Facebook page or YouTube channel. Quartet leader Ken Cook is a graduate of the New England Conservatory in Boston and has been all over the Northern California scene for well over a decade, heard in major venues from Healdsburg to the Wine Country to the Bay Area and points south, playing jazz, blues, Latin and Brazilian music. He leads his own combos and is a first call player with Bay Area favorites John Calloway, Terrie Odabi, and Mark Summer (Turtle Island Quartet) and countless others. Ken holds the…

Three celebrated Bay Area artists — a writer/choreographer, a director and an actor – have created a unique performance piece based on the book Dark Days and a Black Dog. Obie award winning actor Andrea Snow performs an intriguing, fully embodied “play/reading,” a new approach to bringing the written word to vivid life for an audience. Dark Days and a Black Dog, both the book and the performance, is rooted in the experiences of a family over seven heart-wrenching, darkly comic years that will, for many, feel both shocking and breathtakingly recognizable. The piece is directed by Jael Weisman, also an Obie award winner, whose work with legendary companies and productions has spanned almost fifty years. The book is by Emily Keeler, a four- time recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowship who has worked as a dancer, choreographer and writer in the Bay Area and New York..  https://www.darkdaysandablackdog.com/ Author Emily Keeler has been a dancer in San Francisco since 1974. She was a…

A reading to memorialize and celebrate the poet & publisher Robert Anbian. You can catch the live stream here on our website, and on our Facebook page or YouTube channel.

Ever since the pandemic began, Kim Shuck has conducted an open mic over Zoom under the Bird & Beckett auspices, attracting and serving a strong community of poets. The series continues apace, with two readings a month – 2nd and 4th Mondays at 7pm. On the 2nd Monday, there are usually two featured readers followed by an open mic. The 4th Monday reading is all open mic. This Monday, January 9th, the featured readers are Joshua Merchant and Paul Corman-Roberts, and the open mic just might include you! https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84350265713?pwd=eE84V3BYdWxiSFBHNHhmdUt1WTUzdz09 Meeting ID: 843 5026 5713 Passcode: 244211

When it’s the second Sunday in an odd-numbered month, it’s time for America’s favorite Honky Tonk band, The Seducers, with Joe Goldmark, pedal steel; Mitch Polzak, lead guitar and vocals; Hank Maninger, bass guitar and vocals; and Kenny Owen, drums. Bring a twenty for the band and, if so inclined, a bottle for yourself! Not able to come to the shop for the show? Donate any amount that seems fair to you ($10-20 suggested), and watch it in the live stream on our YouTube channel or Facebook page. Your donation helps us guarantee a fair wage to the musicians.

San Francisco journalist Denise Sullivan conducts a monthly series of conversations (the second Sunday of each month from 10-11 a.m.) with The City’s activists, educators, arts and cultural leaders and lesser-known workers, the everyday people who help make this place we call home, live streamed from Bird & Beckett Books. Jan 8 at 10 a.m., Denise and small business owner Graciela Ronconi will have a conversation from our stage in a live stream viewable on the Bird & Beckett Facebook page and YouTube channel. Graciela Ronconi has been in the vintage clothing trade for over 25 years. Starting as an apprentice at various stores on Haight Street during the vintage trade’s ’80s heyday, to opening her shop Guys and Dolls in Noe Valley and back to the Haight with her creation Love Street, Ronconi tracks the not only trends and styles but the ways in which vintage dealing intersects with…

John Schott, guitar Dan Seamans, bass John Hanes, drums with guest pianist Maya Kronfeld $20 cash cover charge; byob. Doors open ten minutes before the show. Reservations, call the shop at 415-586-3733. Not able to come to the shop for the show? Donate any amount that seems fair to you ($10-20 suggested), and watch it in the live stream on our YouTube channel or Facebook page. Your donation helps us guarantee a fair wage to the musicians. Pianist Maya Kronfeld, a Berkeley native and a long-time friend of Actual Trio’s leader John Schott, has performed with such visionaries as Samora Pinderhughes, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Aja Monet and Thana Alexa. She’s returned for the holidays from her “day job,” teaching philosophy and literature at Princeton University, and thus is able to join John’s trio for the occasion of this Bird & Beckett date. Trio members Dan Seamans and John Hanes are,…

Tim Lin, tenor saxophone Charles Chen, piano Ken Okada, bass Ben Esposito, drums   $20 cover charge; byob Reservations: 415-586-3733 Not able to come to the shop? Donate any amount that seems fair to you, and watch it in the live stream on our YouTube channel or Facebook page. Your donations help us pay a fair guaranteed wage to the fine musicians that cross our stage. Tim Lin, leading the date on tenor saxophone, grew up in the Bay Area, where his studies with Dann Zinn had a significant role in his development as a jazz musician. He pursued the art at USC under Bob Sheppard and was in Bob Mintzer’s orchestra there, and counts both of these major tenor sax artist-educators as mentors, along with Larry Schneider, who came to prominence in the 1970s as a sideman with Billy Cobham and Horace Silver and as a member of the Thad…

Michael Koch and Jerry Ferraz host featured poets and an open mic on the first Thursday of each month. Tonight, Norman Zelaya and Michelle Marie Robles Wallace will read in the featured poets segment. Not able to come to the shop? Donate any amount that seems fair to you, and watch it in the live stream on our YouTube channel or Facebook page. Your donations help us pay a fair guaranteed wage to the fine artists that cross our stage. Norman Antonio Zelaya was born and raised in San Francisco, CA. He has published stories in ZYZZYVA, NY Tyrant, 14 Hills, Cipactli, and Apogee Journal, among others. He was a 2015 Zoetrope: All-Story finalist, and 2019 Anginas Scholarship recipient for latinx writers to attend the Community of Writers workshops. In 2017, Orlando & Other Stories (Pochino Press) was published, his first book. Zelaya co-founded Los Delicados, a poetry ensemble, and…

SOLD OUT! Doors at 7:30, sets at 8 and 9:30pm. $50 for the entire evening. Fresh from this year’s Monterey Jazz Fest, Mo’Fone is a band with a concept that’s so simple, it’s radical! Alto player Larry De La Cruz, baritone player Jim Peterson and drummer Jeremy Steinkoler “have put together a formidable and funky trio that snaps and crackles like James Brown’s Famous Flames mixed with a New Orleans Second Line. Peterson’s rich molasses riffs mix with Steinkoler’s incessant beat while De La Cruz solos like Maceo Parker.” –George Harris (www.jazzweekly.com) Read more reviews here! Then come to the store and buy your tix before they’re all gone for New Years Eve at Bird & Beckett, home of good vibes, good beats, good ventilation and great friends! Bring a mask to wear at your discretion, and come healthy! We’ll gladly, and sadly, refund your ticket price if you suddenly…

Craig Handy, tenor saxophone Joe Gilman, piano Essiet Okon Essiet, bass Sylvia Cuenca, drums Superb jazz. Classic. Plan on it. $20 cover charge. byob. reservations, call 415-586-3733 Not able to come to the shop? Donate any amount that seems fair to you, and watch it in the live stream on our YouTube channel or Facebook page. Your donations help us pay a fair guaranteed wage to the fine musicians that cross our stage.  

Duncan James, guitar Larry Chinn, piano Jim Kerwin, bass Bob Blankenship, drums Four long-time colleagues in jazz, swing & blues return to Bird & Beckett for the second year-end date in a row. Duncan himself has closed out the year for us in one combination or another for a half dozen years or more, and it’s always a pleasure. $20 cash cover – byob – reservations, call 415-586-3733 Doors open ten minutes before the 7:30 show time. Guitarist Duncan James has performed solo and with all the cats — here’s a photo from just one of thousands of dates, this one in the company of tenor player Harvey Robb, drummer Bobby Dominguez, bassist Dean Reilly and pianist Larry Dunlap. He’s played bigger stages countless times, with fellow guitarists George Barnes, Howard Alden, Bruce Foreman and Mundell Lowe, with singers Marilyn McCoo, Eartha Kitt, Bernadette Peters and Bobby McFerrin, and with…

Not able to come to the shop? Donate any amount that seems fair to you, and watch it in the live stream on our YouTube channel or Facebook page. Your donations help us pay a fair guaranteed wage to the fine musicians and poets that cross our stage. Lucy Lang Day (Editor Scarlet Tanager Press, poet), Joyce Jenkins (Editor Poetry Flash, poet), Steve Rood (attorney, poet), and Jim LeCuyer (teacher, short story writer) present new and selected work, and filmmaker Jordan Freeman will screen his 20-minute piece, Sea State, with Jim’s voiceover. Jim LeCuyer is the author of four books, A Brick for Offissa Pupp (Floating Island Press), Threnody for Sturgeon (Outskirts), Duck Lessons (Dark House) and Stories for Clever Children (Raven and Wren), all available through Amazon.  He has three Master’s degrees (Creative Writing, Education, Psychology), has taught English Literature at Oakland Tech and Ruth Asawa School of the…