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!
Tuesday: The Elé Salif Howell Trio feat. Ryoma Takenaga, bass; Cecil Alexander, guitar – 7:30pm – $20___ Wednesday: The Art Khu Trio feat. Elé Salif Howell, drums, Ryoma Takenaga, bass – 7:30pm – $20___ Thursday: The James Mitchell Trio salutes Bud Powell – 7:30pm – $20___ Friday: The Tony Johnson Quartet – 6pm – $20___ Friday: The Lost Shapes – 8:30pm – $20___ Saturday: The Noel Jewkes Quartet – 7:30pm – $20___ Details follow! Read on! ___________________________________ Drummer Elé Salif Howell, a Bay Area native, plays Monterey in Chief Adjuah’s band on the Jimmy Lyons Stage Friday the 27th… but you can catch this young lion of jazz close to home at Bird & Beckett on Tuesday the 24th and Wednesday the 25th! We first heard Eli here on two dates in 2015/2016 when he was about 14 years old and he’s been here four more times since last December. We…
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The San Francisco Sextet plays the classic hard bop repertoire of the Jazz Messengers, Horace Silver, Sonny Clark, and Hank Mobley, and many more; as well as beautiful ballads and blues. Erik Jekabson, trumpet John Gove, trombone Charlie McCarthy, saxophone Benny Watson, piano Jeff Saxton, bass Greg Gotelli, drums $25 cover charge; byob Drummer Greg Gotelli fields numerous great bands in the Bay Area, from the SF Quintet with vocalist Darlene Langston to the Buena Vista Jazz Band with clarinetist Don Neeley to vocalist Lorretta Gooden’s Hammond B3 combo. Many of the great veterans of Bay Area jazz have found a berth with Greg’s groups, including Noel Jewkes, Si Perkoff, Al Obidinski, Frank Jackson, Duncan James, Glen Pearson, Chuck Bennett, Denise Perrier, Mike Greensill, Marty Eggers, John Hunt, Andrew Storar, John Clark and a host of others. A modest but dapper guy keeping good time at the kit, Greg is…
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“AVOTCJA’s poetry is music and Avotcja’s music is poetry. Both are as hot as fire and as soothing as snow flakes. And in both she brings the best of her talent in Spanish and English. Listen to her. Read her. Enjoy her. Celebrate her.” • Camincha – Peruvian Poet/Novelist; & Pacifica Poet Laureate, 2017-2021. _______________ Poet/Playwright/Essayist/Fiction Writer/Multi-Percussionist/Photographer/Teacher, Avotcja is a Bay Area icon with her group Modúpue. At Bird & Beckett tonight, Modúpue will be a sextet with Avotcja joined by pianist Rudi Mwongozi, violinist Sandi Poindexter, saxophonist Francis Wong, bassist Heshima Mark Williams and drummer Myron Cohen. Modúpue was named best jazz group of the year twice, in 2005 and again in 2010, by the Bay Area Blues Hall of Fame. Avotcja herself was named a “Jazz Hero” by the Jazz Journalists Association. Her radio shows on KPFA – Bebop, Cubop & the Musical Truth (Tuesdays, 8-10pm), and KPOO…
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Mutant Audio Mini takes jazz on a deep excursion into the pedal extremities. A half-decade of electronica exploration. David Boyce/saxophone; Scott Foster/guitar. $20 suggested, byob. Students/teens – $10. Kids free. https://www.facebook.com/bird.and.beckett/videos/811531316984745
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Ben Stolorow, piano. Peter Barshay, bass. Vince Lateano, drums. and special guest Ryan Ancheta on trumpet. $20 suggested cover charge; byob. Reservations, call 415-586-3733. The Vince Lateano Trio plays on the third Sunday of each month at Bird & Beckett, putting a fresh twist on jazz standards drawn from a deep well of tradition. Always a pleasure.
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Matt Renzi, reeds. Dahveed Behroozi, piano. Josh Thurston-Milgrom, bass. Tim Bulkley, drums. $20 cover charge; byob. Reservations, call 415-586-3733. Adventurous compositions delivered with consummate skill and commitment. Matt Renzi runs quartets in San Francisco, New York City and Rome. His mastery of the saxophone is a pleasure to experience, and his compatriots in the quartet are fully equal to the challenge of playing his music, adding dimensions that take the listener deep into Matt’s world.
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Michele Korb, guitar and vocals. Barbara Raboy, reeds. Susanne DiVincenzo, bass. $20 cover charge; byob. Reservations, call 415-586-3733. Take 3 plays jazz standards and tunes from the Great American Songbook. Barb and Susanne play with Melba’s Kitchen, the all-women Big Band in the East Bay that plays the music of the black women geniuses, Mary Lou Williams and Melba Liston. Michele just returned from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland where she played with an experimental theater group. The trio is well known from a long, ongoing run of monthly first Fridays bookings at Chez Mansour in Albany and before that at Berkeley’s Cafe Leila.
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Eric Shifrin, piano & vocals. Ari Munkres, bass. Mark Lee, drums. $20 suggested donation, adults. BYOB. Teens and students, $10. Kids free. Duke Ellington added innumerable lovely tunes to the American Songbook, often in collaboration, credited and sometimes not, with Billy Strayhorn. Treasures untold. Eric and his trio will pull some up for your eager ears this evening.
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The evening ragas Bruce Hamm and Ferhan Qureshi will perform in duo at Bird & Beckett are structured on melodic lines performed over rhythmic cycles, or tala, that employ principles set forth in the 2nd-3rd century CE Sanskrit treatise on the aesthetics, poetics, music and dance of Indian theatre known as the Bharata Natyashastra as refined in the Dattilam (probably 3rd–4th century CE). The tradition which Messrs. Hamm and Qureshi have studied developed in North India after Hindustani classical music diverged from the Carnatic classical music tradition of South India in the 12th century CE. Bruce Hamm is a disciple of the revered maestro Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. He has pursued a serious and continuous study of classical instrumental and vocal music over nearly 4 decades. Bruce accompanied his Guru Ali Akbar Khan onstage on multiple occasions and has performed numerous solo concerts throughout the US and India. Ferhan Qureshi…
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Fall is when nature breaks up with you – the perfect time to hear songs of heartache. So, now’s the time to flag 9/11 for your emergency Johnny Lonely show! Johnny Lonely and Joshua Raoul Brody’s harmonized cries for help bring first responders Ed McClary and David Jess, on drums and bass, respectively, rushing in — though never rushing the beat! This will be the last full Johnny Lonely band gig of 2024. After this (well, truth be told, leading up to this and pretty much ever after), they lick their wounds, wonder what happened, and why, and grow emboldened to do it yet again. But another day for that! Thank goodness! Tonight, expect jazzy original songs of humorous heartbreak and pop covers of musical mopery. Recovery time varies. $20 cover charge; byob (highly recommended, under the circumstances). Reservations, call the shop at 415-586-3733.
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Jeff DeMark gleaned sage insights from Zoe Nordstrom nearly every time they took the time to talk about her life, his life, and his contemporaneous San Francisco scuffle through 17 temp jobs in 22 months in the late 1980s, not to mention the ill-fated love affair that had brought him out from Wisconsin to San Francisco. Famous to us and to community activists near and far as one of the Gum Tree Girls, who headed off plans for a freeway that would have wended its way up the canyon and over Twin Peaks for the convenience of hustling commuters, Zoe Nordstrom rented Jeff a space in her Glen Park house for a three-year stretch that included the period covered in his solo show. Her take on things colored his whole philosophy on how to proceed in a world full of hustling commuters. In “Went to Lunch, Never Returned,” with Laura…
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Lynne Maes, vocals and guitar Hank Maninger, vocals and lead guitar Joe Goldmark, pedal steel guitar Tim Wagar, bass Leor Beary, drums $20 cover charge/byob Reservations: 415-586-3733 Nashville Honeymoon honors traditional country music and pushes its boundaries. Lynne and Hank both write songs for the band that sound like instant classics. Hank’s driving lead guitar, perfectly balanced by Lynne’s true-blue vocals, are – as the old song goes – the right combination. Add pedal steel whiz Joe Goldmark, and this band takes on an extra dimension that’s guaranteed to please. With tight vocal harmonies and a rhythm section that can play a country shuffle every bit as well as a country rock anthem, Nashville Honeymoon delivers a dynamic, charming and heartfelt show every time they hit the stage.
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Ben Ball, saxophone Sam Cady, piano Charles Thomas, bass Michael Spencer, drums $20 cover charge; byob Reservations: 415-586-3733 Charles Thomas has been laying down his soulful jazz and R&B for decades, even if he did have to drive a Muni bus for years to keep the rent paid — not the first professional musician with a day job! Still, those party bands like Pride & Joy can augment a working man’s pay quite nicely, and that always made it a treat when he could find time in his schedule with them to do some bebop quartet work on the Bird & Beckett stage. It’ll be a good time when Charles brings a quartet tonight!
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Macy Blackman, piano and vocals Bing Nathan, bass $20 suggested donation; byob Teens and music students, $5-10 suggested Kids free Reservations, call 415-586-3733 Macy Blackman is a piano professor of the first water, drawing from a deep well of New Orleans R&B, blues & boogie woogie, with a half dozen cds to his credit and decades of experience. Nothin’ but good times. Guaranteed!
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Darren Johnston, trumpet/vocals Dillon Vado, vibraphone Joshua Thurston-Milgrom, bass Jaimeo Brown, drums Featuring an assortment of Johnstons’ originals as well as songs by the likes of Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, and Ornette Coleman $20 cover charge/byob Reservations: 415-586-3733
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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
