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!
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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Four poets gather to launch the new anthology Season Lightly With Salt: Poems and Recipes from the Test Kitchens of the San Francisco Wild Writing Women (note: Kathyrn Santana Goldman is unable to join her colleagues on this reading) Oud player Paul Ohanesian will provide musical interludes and accompaniment, and refreshments will be shared! The joyful and sometimes bittersweet collection of poems and recipes by poets Angie Minkin, Elise Kazanjian, Heather Saunders Estes, Kathryn Santana Goldman, and Robin Michel to be found in this volume pay tribute to family, friends and community. Preparing and sharing meals with one another nurtures and sustains, comforts and consoles, and heightens our pleasures. Every palette will find something to satisfy their tastes in these poems and recipes from the various cultures blending in America’s stewpot. You will even learn how to read fortunes in a cup of Armenian Coffee. “Just like poetry, cooking…
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Karina Denike, vocals Tom Griesser, clarinet and sax Michael MacIntosh, piano Vic Wong, guitar Joe Kyle, Jr., bass Randy Lee Odell, drums $25-35 sliding scale for adults, cash please! Kids under 12 free; teens and music students $15 Jump jazz, rhythm & blues, fresh as a daisy with deep roots in the ’40s & ’50s! A Thanksgiving tradition at Bird & Beckett. Do come! BYOB and those desserts you just couldn’t finish! Call the store at 415-586-3733 for a reservation!
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Brad Buethe, guitar. Robb Fisher, bass. Akira Tana, drums. $20 cover charge; byob. for a reservation, call the store at 415-586-3733. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, bassist Robb Fisher worked extensively with legendary vibes player Cal Tjader. He’s heard on vinyl under Tjader’s leadership with conguero Poncho Sanchez and Clare Fisher arranging and playing electric piano (“Guarabe,” “Here” and “Huracan,” recorded in 1976, 1977 and 1978, respectively); and then touring and recording in Tjader’s new sextet with Sanchez, pianist Mark Levine, flute player Roger Glenn and traps drummer Vince Lateano. The sextet toured until Tjader’s death in 1982 by heart attack in Manila at age 56, recording four albums along the way. The 1979 release “La Onda Va Bien” won a Grammy for Best Latin Album in 1980 and “Gozame Pero Ya” was nominated in that category in 1981, though it lost out to Clare Fisher’s…
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New Squatoolas are a Thanksgiving weekend tradition at Bird & Beckett. They’ll take you on a joyous romp in a New Orleans mode, playing the music of NOLA jazz, funk and soul pioneers – The Meters, Smokey Johnson, Fats Domino, The Nevilles, The Wild Tchoupitoulas, ‘Fess – as well as original compositions invoking the style and vibe of those and other greats of that bayou metropolis. Jim Peterson saxophones Scott Foster guitar Joe Kyle Jr. bass Larry Vann drums $25 cover charge; byob and your leftover desserts! Come any time, stay as long as you like. No reservations accepted unless you’re coming for the start. If that’s the case, you can stop by the store or call us on Friday at 415-586-3733 to claim a seat.
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The New Squatoolas play Friday from 6-9pm The Robb Fisher Trio plays Saturday, 7:30-9:30pm The Cottontails play Sunday, 4:30-6:30pm Bring $25 and your own beverage Friday and Sunday Bring $20 & yob on Saturday! Thank you to our indigenous hosts for tolerating us in this unceded territory, the one they borrowed from and shared with the wildlife and the fungus that still persists amungus. Six months of fun ahead! Watch for our Easter weekend shows… and all that comes between now and then… Make your plans now! buy your Amtrak ticket to San Francisco, and join us!
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Elé Salif Howell, drums, leads a fantastic quartet of young phenoms through two sets of jazz music — Kazemde George, saxophone; Kai Lyons, guitar; Giulio Xavier Cetto, bass. $25 cover charge / byob. Elé synthesizes the multirhythms of Tony Williams, the power and drive of Elvin Jones, and the intuitive complexity of African drumming, and has for several years travelled in the band of Ravi Coltrane and more recently that of Chief Adjuah (formerly known as Christian Scott), two saxophonists of international stature. Elé has known and played with Kazemde George since both were Oakland kids being schooled in jazz and musicianship after the bell at the Oakland Jazz Workshops, now celebrating 30 years teaching talented youth eager to learn with a capacity for great art. OJW is an organization of the sort that makes the Bay Area revered for its cultural depth and transmission. Many of your favorite Bay…
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Sunday, 11/24 at 5pm, it’s our last-Sunday-of-the-month jam session hosted by the Vince Lateano Trio. If you’re not working a gig, drop in. If you just want to hear some in-the-moment jazz, drop in. $20 helps us pay the trio — Ben Stolorow, piano; Peter Barshay, bass; Vince Lateano, drums — three of the great musicians who make San Francisco one of the great jazz meccas.
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Saturday, November 23rd – 7:30-9:30pm
On tour from Bordeaux
Rachael Magidson’s West Coast Jazz Quartet
Saturday, 11/23 at 7:30pm, Rachael Magidson’s West Coast Jazz Quartet, direct from the Atlantic seaport of Bordeaux in Southwestern France. Rachael migrated to France from the Bay Area a number of years ago, and many will remember her group Sophisticated Ladies holding forth at the Bliss Bar in Noe Valley many years back. Read the bios of Rachael’s bandmates here. That’s Rachael with the trumpet in the photo below. $25/byob.
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Friday, 11/22 at 6pm, the Tony Johnson Quartet holds forth, playing bebop, hardbop and classic jazz standards from across the spectrum as befits their mood. Bob Kenmotsu, tenor sax; Keith Saunders, piano; Eric Markowitz, bass; Tony Johnson, drums. $20/byob….. Friday, 11/22 at 8:30pm, the Gurkestra, a small combo flexible in repertoire with a personnel handpicked by its leader, the baritone saxophonist Charlie Gurke. Tonight, Charlie will lead the Gurkestra through music from his project Loteria. Josh Jones on drums and Patrick Morehead on keys are the sublime rhythm section. $20/byob.
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Walker Brents III, our resident philosopher & spiritual advisor, builds on thoughts begun in his October talk on Walt Whitman’s Democratic Vistas. Tonight’s talk is entitled “Democratic Creativity: From Whitman to You.” Inspiration in challenging times has been a constant and perennial theme. What forms has literature taken as communities, societies and individuals evolve amidst constant change? We are strangers in a strange land, bearing familiar gifts that are yet to be uncovered. The two talks can be viewed in the videos posted below. Walker’s talks comprise a mostly monthly series that’s been going on since the turn of the 21st century here at Bird & Beckett and is now–since, you know, covid–mostly a live stream, but do feel free to come in and pull up a chair. You may need to tap on the window to get our attention and gain admittance, but don’t be shy…
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Parakeet, a year-long intensive writing program that helps writers finish their books, is run by Beth Pickens, a Los Angeles-based consultant for artists and arts organizations. She is the Managing Director of LA-based queer press, Dopamine Books, which is led by legendary writer Michelle Tea. Pickens is the author of Make Your Art No Matter What (Chronicle Books, 2021). Her previous book is Your Art Will Save Your Life (Feminist Press, 2018). Her popular podcast, “Mind Your Practice,” is widely available, as is her artist service platform, Homework Club. Today’s reading at Bird & Beckett brings together five writers in the program to read their work: Michelle Ott is a visual artist and writer working on Outer Space is Closer Than Antarctica, an illustrated memoir (with science) about the four seasons she spent working at McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Her artists’ book, Current Occupant, was recently acquired by the Smithsonian Postal History…
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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
