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!
The first Thursday of September, intrepid explorers from North Beach Andrew Paul Nelson (shown at left) and Scott Bird are expected to provision themselves with Riesling and make their way to Bird & Beckett to size up our wilderness outpost, est. 1999, here to declaim poetically on the journey that’s taken them this far. 1999 was the year that another Bird, not Scott, dangling his buddy Beckett in his bony claws, swept down from the dizzy atmosphere to alight on mama Frisco’s twin peaks and drifted on a reed down Islais Creek into leafy Glen Canyon, to nest in what’s now the stony Manzoni upthrust on Diamond, then just a sweet little sheet-rocked, thousand-square-foot, four-year old preschooler of a bookshop known as Jill ‘n Pat’s Glen Park Books. In short order, Eureka Valley watershed troubadour Jerry Ferraz heard rumor of the shop and wandered afoot from around the way to…
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Join us to hear from Ken Kann, presenting his gripping memoir. In 1979, after months of puzzling symptoms, Ken’s father was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS — commonly known as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease.” Ken relates his own journey that begins as he watches his dad and mom struggle to grasp this life-shattering news, triggering disturbing realizations that at age thirty-five, a proud survivor of sixties radicalism and the counterculture, Ken himself is leading a marginal life as a freelance writer and part-time teacher in Berkeley California. He is still battling with his dad. He is not prepared for his dad to be sick. He cannot absorb what he reads about ALS and what may happen to his dad. He is stunned by his parents’ tears. He goes home to help his mom, his dad, and himself. Kenneth Kann helped his father live and die with the dread disease ALS.…
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Hafez Modirzadeh, saxophone Stan Poplin, bass Jason Lewis, drums $20 Cover charge; byob Reservations: 415-586-3733 Hafez Modirzadeh has had an outsized influence on jazz education and jazz players over the past few decades, but has now moved on to his own projects and gigging, with a deep affinity for diverse traditions that dovetail with and complement America’s true classical music, jazz, through their own approaches to harmonic structure, rhythmic conceptions and improvisation in performance. His trio takes jazz deep, and plays with an abundance of joy.
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Sharman Duran, piano & vocals Tod Dickow, saxophone Alex Baum, bass Bob Blankenship, drums $20 cover charge; byob Reservations, 415-586-3733 The Sharman Duran Quartet offers music that questions what we take for granted. Sharman is a complete musician whose main impetus is always to get inside the music, whether it be bop, Brazilian jazz, funk, Afro Cuban jazz, R&B, or (her favorite) “uncategorizable”. Her voice is soulful, her phrasing makes astute use of rhythm, her delivery witty, poignant or playful as called for by the composer (be it Cole Porter, Chick Corea, Fran Landesman, George Duke, Stevie Wonder). Her piano voicings provide the perfect setting for her voice and a complement for the other instruments in the ensemble, and her jazz B3 playing exhibits a mean left hand bass. Born and raised in San Francisco by jazz musicians guitarist Eddie Duran and vocalist/pianist Arlene Hart Duran, she spent her formative…
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Duncan James, guitar Ned Boynton, guitar Jeff Saxton, bass Greg Gotelli, drums with special guest, guitarist Jordan Samuels $20 cover charge; byob. Reservations, 415-586-3733. Guitarist Duncan James has asked guitarist Ned Boynton to join him in a quartet date in the spirit of swing guitarist George Barnes, and guitarist Jordan Samuels is coming along! Born in 1921, at age 10 Barnes was likely the first person to play an electrically amplified guitar — a Sears Roebuck Silvertone fitted with a pickup by his brother and fed through an amplifier. Barnes joined the Musicians Union in 1932 at age 12, and launched a 45-year career. Between 1935 and 1937, he toured throughout the Midwest gigged around Chicago with his own bands, and by the time he was 14 he was accompanying blues vocalists such as Big Bill Broonzy and Blind John Davis. In 1937, he was discovered by Tommy Dorsey’s clarinetist…
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Denise Sullivan, author of Shadow Dream Chaser of Rainbows: In Memory of a Movement Hero, hosts a remembrance of the March on Washington sixty-one years ago today, focused on the story of folk/protest singer Len Chandler. Len Chandler, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were among the performers at the historic March on Washington on August 28, 1963, but Chandler is not always remembered for his contribution that day, or for the work he did in the years before and after the march in the name of voting rights and racial justice. “You have to take the lead from somewhere and there were only a few performers around who wrote songs, and of them, my favorite was Len Chandler,” wrote Bob Dylan in his memoir, Chronicles. Shadow Dream Chaser of Rainbows, Sullivan’s book, is Chandler’s story, from his youth in Akron, Ohio to his life-changing trip to New York where he…
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Funkified soul from a legendary young singer, composer and band leader whose quintet will knock you out. Rojai, vocals and small percussion Chris Carter, guitar Eli Goldlink, piano Bil Hagar, bass Jeff Mince, drums $20 cover charge, byob Reservations: 415-586-3733
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Remembering Dorothy Lefkovits and Chuck Peterson, drummer Tony Johnson fronts the 230 Jones Street, Local 6, Literary Jazz Band on Friday the 23rd at 6pm. Charlie McCarthy, saxophone; Glen Deardorff, guitar; Sam Cady, piano; Chuck Bennett, bass.
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Patrick James Dunagan, Tammy Fortin, Ava Koohbor and Nicholas James Whittington read from works published by host Marina Lazzara’s Two-Way Mirror Books. Warm Spell –Marina, Tammy, Jay Lee, Kevin Yserloo and guest Richard Beard — improvises following the reading.
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Walker Brents III addresses the enigma of Rimbaud after he’s forsworn the poet’s life in Paris. Becoming someone else was Arthur Rimbaud’s task again and again. On the page it turned into unforgettable poetry. On the actual globe it became strange adventures in frontier borderlands. The poetry runs on in symbolic suggestion. The journeys in time and space are recollected in fragments that betoken strange frequencies. Our heart-strings vibrate collectively. We don’t know what it means, but he speaks to us even if he never meant to. He couldn’t help it. He was born to create an interesting story of himself, a universal one despite his best intentions…
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Music of John Coltrane and the Beatles, jazz standards & more! Drummer Brian Melvin, a San Francisco native son of the 1960s, is traveling out of his home in Estonia with Danish guitarist Soren Lee and joining forces with the great bassist John Wiitala, who came up in the days of Keystone Korner and remains to a kornerstone of the San Francisco jazz scene! Brian & Soren, with drummer Mads Sondergaard, put out a cd of the Coltrane material recently. Sample it here
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From 8:30-10pm, Friday, August 16th, catch local prodigies, now NYC-based rising jazz stars Eytan & Gabriel Schillinger-Hyman with their quartet featuring Langston Hughes II on sax and Michael Mitchell on drums. $20 cover charge (cash or venmo at the door); byob; reservations, call 415-202-4870. Friday the 16th from 6-8pm Scott Foster kicked off this third weekend in August with his Happy Hour Combo. He mixes up a fresh jazz cocktail for Bird & Beckett regulars every third Friday of the month. Scott’s trio this time out featured drummer Omar Aran and bassist Ollie Dudek, indulging us with jazz classics, standards, bebop, blues and beyond. As a rule of thumb, you’ll never go far wrong if you BYOB and a twenty for the band. Can’t squeeze out a twenty at this moment in time? Pay what you can. Kids free, teens and music students under age 22 get in for five…
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The elegant & masterful jazz pianist Art Khu will join two terrific young players — drummer Zev Vestel and bassist Sedge Green — before the two embark to music programs in the Great Eastern Universities that continue to bring so many fine musicians into full throttle jazz careers. Help us celebrate with two sets of music at Bird & Beckett this Wednesday. 7:30 start, BYOB! $20 cover for adults; $10 for students under age 22; kids free.
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Bassist Amina Scott has been touring in California in support of her new album “Where the Wild Seed Grows,” and has just wrapped up a sequence of quintet dates. We’re pleased to present this intimate trio engagement at Bird & Beckett before she returns to New Orleans. Born and raised in Oakland, Amina arrived in New Orleans in 2012 to pursue an undergraduate degree in music at Loyola, and proceeded to Florida State University where she received her masters degree. She then returned to Loyola, where she now teaches. Along the way, she has performed with artists including Steve Turre, Wess “Warm Daddy” Anderson, Nicholas Payton, David Murray, Jamison Ross, Nnenna Freelon, Christian Scott Atunde Adjuah, and more. She has also performed with the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra (Tallahassee, FL) and the Albany Symphony Orchestra (Albany, GA). In 2017, Amina was a fellow in the Steans Institute of Music Jazz Program…
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Curious about Glen Park and wanting an extra excuse to visit the neighborhood? Or perhaps you’re a lucky resident looking for a a good excuse to stay local! Poetry with cello Wednesday evening, extemporaneous musings on Walt Whitman and democracy Thursday, two varieties of jazz on Friday and jazz of another stripe altogether on Saturday… and a sweet little jazz trio on Sunday. Poetry and jazz are centerpieces of the Bird & Beckett cultural offerings. You’re on to something good! ________________ Wednesday, 7:30 pm: Poets Diane Frank and Stewart Florsheim. Thursday, 7:30pm: Walker Brents on Walt Whitman’s Democratic Vistas. Friday, 6:00pm: The Scott Foster Quartet with Danny Brown, saxophone. Friday, 8:30pm: Filipina Jazz: The Raquel Berlind Quintet. Saturday, 7:30pm: Lewis Jordan Music at Large. Sunday: 5:00pm: The Vince Lateano Trio. __________________ Poets Diane Frank (While Listening to the Enigma Variations) and Stewart Florsheim (Amusing the Angels) read new and recent work…
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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
