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!
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But nothing beats being in the room with the music & the musicians!
Marvin Carter, saxophone. Ingbar Solomon, saxophone. Tamir Lifshitz, guitar. Lillian Charlotte Stern, bass. Gary Jones III, percussion. with special guest, pianist Art Khu. $20 cover charge; byob. Reservations, 415-586-3733. Lily Stern has just completed her degree in music at the New School in Manhattan, and is home this summer, preparing her debut album and playing at venues this weekend from Mr. Tipples on Saturday to Oaktown Jazz Workshops and Bird & Beckett on Sunday. Catch her before she flies away! Lily is a bassist, composer, vocalist and producer who came highly recommended by two friends of Bird & Beckett, both titans of local jazz and champions/mentors of young talent — drummer Myron Cohen and saxophonist Richard Howell. Born and raised in the Bay Area, Lillian Charlotte Stern was immersed at a young age in music from funk, American folk and rock to traditional jazz, Afro Cuban jazz, Timba, and Hindustani…
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All jazz players welcome! No charge to play. Audience, your donations allow us to pay the hosting trio members a fair wage for their labor. Drummer Vince Lateano, bassist Peter Barshay and pianist Ben Stolorow set the stage and relinquish their instruments to anyone with the chops and nerve to join in the long tradition that is the jam session. Players come together to find common ground and individual expression, drawing on musical language and tunes that generations of jazz players have made into standards.
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Noel Jewkes, saxes Grant Levin, piano Robb Fisher, bass Mark Lee, drums with guest vocalist Kay Kostopoulos $20 cash cover charge, byob. Reservations, call 415-586-3733 Noel is now the grand old man of San Francisco saxophone, with a career spanning six to seven decades. They call him Dr. Legato, for his lovely long saxophone lines and graceful phrasing. His companions on the bandstand are first-call players who have worked alongside Noel for years, and the chemistry will be evident from the first tune. Joined by the sultry and emotive vocalist Kay Kostopoulos, whose rapport with Noel is complete, the quartet will offer two sets of jazz standards, bossas and Noel’s original compositions.
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Laura Dreyer – saxophone and flute Marcos Silva – piano Richard Lindsey- bass Zach Mondlick – drums $20 cover charge; byob. Reservations: 415-586-3733 Saxophonist, flutist and composer Laura Dreyer is a vibrant and widely acclaimed voice in the New York and global jazz scene. Her compositions combine lyrical melodies with jazz, Brazilian rhythms, funk and rock, and she’s been called to work for Dr. Billy Taylor, Dom Salvador, Helcio Milito, Portinho, Walter Bishop Jr., Mel Lewis, Robert Palmer, Nnenna Freelon, James McBride, The Diva Jazz Orchestra and many others. Laura has headlined at the Kennedy Center’s “Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival,” and The Syracuse Jazz Festival, as well as many NYC venues including The Blue Note, Ornithology, Sweet Rhythm, Birdland, The Zinc Bar, The Roxy Hotel, and many others. She’s released four CDs as a leader/producer, including Mysterious Encounter (Lavasphere), Free Flying Bird (Sony/Piloo), Sax in the City…
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Bob Kenmotsu, tenor saxophone Keith Saunders, piano Matt Montgomery, bass Tony Johnson, drums $20 suggested donation, byob. Teens and music students, $5-10 sliding scale Kids free Australian native Tony Johnson arrived on these shores in 1959, sneaking into the U.S. from British Columbia and quickly becoming a fixture on the North Beach jazz scene. He was first heard on record on an album recorded live at the Coffee Gallery on Grant Avenue in 1960 by vocalist Bev Kelly with Pony Poindexter on saxophone and Flip Nuñez on piano, produced for Riverside Records by Orrin Keepnews. Not a bad start! He’s been swinging ever since. Habitués of the legendary Club Deluxe well remember the countless nights in the first couple of decades of this century when he ruled the venue’s bandstand from behind the drumkit, carrying all the City’s best young jazz players to ecstatic levels of performance. This evening, Tony’s…
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In This Ravishing World (Regal House Publishing, 2024) Winner of the W.S. Porter Prize and Winner of The Prism Prize for Climate Literature, Bay Area novelist Nina Schuyler’s latest book, her fourth, takes her writing to a new level of engagement and artistry. “In this ravishing book, you will find stories that lift your heart and stories that break it. Powerfully beautiful and beautifully powerful, Schuyler has written exactly the book this moment needs.” Karen Joy Fowler In This Ravishing World is a sweeping, impassioned short story collection, ringing out with joy, despair, and hope for the natural world. Nine connected stories unfold, bringing together an unforgettable cast of dreamers, escapists, activists, and artists, creating a kaleidoscopic view of the climate crisis. An older woman who has spent her entire life fighting for the planet sinks into despair. A young boy is determined to bring the natural world to his…
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Fabiana Cozza, vocals. Annette A. Aguilar, drums. Ricardo Peixoto, guitar. Brian Moran, cavaco, bass & guitar. Ricky Aguilar, percussion. $25 cover charge. Cash or Venmo at the door, please. We’re flexible on the cover charge, but please do consider that with the addition of percussionist Ricky Aguilar we have five mouths to feed tonight! For reservations, call 415-586-3733. Byob! Annette A. Aguilar, New York-based bandleader, drummer and educator, brings her West Coast quartet featuring guitarist Ricardo Peixoto, Brian Moran on cavaco, bass and guitar, and Ricky Aguilar on percussion to present the renowned Brazilian vocalist Fabiana Cozza on the Bird & Beckett stage. Fabiana is said to have one of the most stunning voices to emerge from Brazil in recent years, and is considered by her countrymen to be one of the nation’s leading interpreters of Afro-Brazilian music, beginning with samba! Fabiana’s repertoire reflects a deep knowledge of the many…
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Ben Stolorow, piano Peter Barshay, bass Vince Lateano, drums Special guest, guitarist Brad Buethe $20 suggested donation Teens, music students – $5-10 sliding scale Kids free One of the great pleasures in jazz is the piano trio. Vince, Peter and Ben — three talented veterans spanning three generations — have been working together in a third Sundays residency at Bird & Beckett for two years now, and it’s been wonderful to hear the delight and ease of their collaboration. Lately, the trio has been inviting a guest to join them on their dates to add an extra dimension and this Sunday, it’s Brad Buethe — a guitarist with a complex harmonic bent that will be interesting to hear intertwined with Ben Stolorow’s open, economical and lyrical approach to the piano with his own keen ear for harmony. Brad has been on the scene with Vince and Peter at least since…
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Come celebrate the release of Dharma Pharmacy & Surf Shop, by Kevin Opstedal, the latest publication from Bird & Beckett, a knock-out pamphlet by the Venice-born and -raised, and long-time Santa Cruz-based poet, publisher, and documenter of the dream. Opstedal’s history of Poetry, Poets and Community in Bolinas, from 1967 to ’80, Dreaming as One, is essential reading, as are the many magazines (Gas: High Octane Poetry, plus various one-shots) and small books he has edited and published for decades (Blue Press, and other shorter-lived imprints). Opstedal’s poems have been collected over the years in myriad small pamphlets, and thicker volumes, Like Rain (Angry Dog Press, 1999), California Redemption Value (Uno Press, 2011), and Pacific Standard Time (Ugly Duckling, 2016). Duncan McNaughton writes: “Reading the swells, reading the sets—everse bathymetric with the words of The Poems given him in good faith. No one else in my acquaintance—other than Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, Hart Crane, Charles Olson—has done so as finely than has Kevin Opstedal.” “For…
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George Cotsriilos, guitar Robb Fisher, bass $20 cover charge (cash or venmo at the door). byob Reservations, call 415-586-3733. George Cotsirilos is a uniquely talented jazz guitarist, composer and bandleader, with countless club and concert performances to his credit as well as seven cds (eight, if you count the Nighthawks quintet date from 1995 that he organized, which featured drummer Eddie Marshall along with Robb Fisher on bass, Paul Nagel on piano and Wayne De Silva on saxophone). His duo project with Robb Fisher has produced beautiful music for years, and this date is not to be missed. Robb worked with Cal Tjader for a half-dozen years in the late 1970s, and recorded at least three albums with him, including a live album recorded at the Great American Music Hall in 1977 and released in 1979 (“Here”), the Grammy Award winning album, “La Onda Va Bien” and Grammy Nominee album,…
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Jon Raskin, saxophone. Scott Foster, guirar. Matt Montgomery, bass. Tim Bulkley, drums. $20 cover charge (cash or venmo at the door); byob. Reservations, call 415-586-3733 Marking the ascension of John Coltrane on July 18,1967, the quartet will draw on Coltrane’s work in the 1960s as he began to leave song form and flowed into more open improvisation leading up to the watershed album called “Ascension.” Recorded by Coltrane on June 28, 1965 with a large ensemble of players deeply committed to the free jazz discipline, “Ascension” came on the heels of “A Love Supreme” and was the next giant step by the saxophonist, setting the course for his final years. ROVA, the saxophone quartet of which Jon is a founding member, reimagined “Ascension,” expanding their conception of Coltrane’s late work and its implications for free improvisation. Jon, Scott, Matt and Tim are continuing that exploration on July 19th at Bird…
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Larry Vann, drums Tim Landis, guitar Richard Cruze, keyboards A. J. Joyce, bass with Scott Foster, guitar Drummer Larry Vann, the Groove Merchant, has brought his flawless funk to Bird & Beckett through the years with his trio and in other combos including the New Squatoolas and This Side Up. This evening, guitarist Scott Foster has invited Larry to bring his band to the 3rd Friday Jazz Happy Hour for two sets of soul, funk and jazz. Scott Foster has been a cornerstone of the Bird & Beckett jazz calendar for 21 years-plus, ever since our weekly bookings began in late 2002. These days, the third Friday of each month is his to do with as he pleases; it varies every time out and it’s always a pleasure. It pleases Scott this month to sit in with drummer Larry Vann’s band! You’ve heard Scott and Larry together here in the New…
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Mohalla Films (Community Films) proudly presents BHATTHI (THE KILN, 2023), an ecofilm short based on the life of a 21st century potter family who make bhar (earthen teacups) in India. The clay teacups are used once, discarded, retrieved, remade and sent out again to the tea stalls in a generations-old cycle. Will this craft survive the onslaught of plastic cups, the No. 1 source of soil and marine pollution? click through to read a great article from Al Jazeera on bhar in contemporary Kolkata Mohalla Films is a family-run film collective by San Francisco filmmakers and educators Abhijeet Paul and Rebecca Whittington. The collective wants to bring global ecocinema to San Francisco in the belief that it is important to learn about how people in other parts of the world are dealing with deep environmental crises in traditional and innovative ways every day. Mohalla Films is returning to South Asia…
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Honky Tonk Showman Mitch Polzak plays a mean guitar and raises a ruckus like no one else! This second Sunday summer afternoon, he brings us his famous Royal Deuces — Tim Wagar on bass and Paul Revelli on bass — with pedal steel master Joe Goldmark. He’ll thrill you and seduce you with two sets of rave up country music. You don’t want to miss this! BYOB and a twenty for the band!
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Larry Tye has published books on the Pullman Porters, Satchel Paige, Bobby Kennedy… The Jazzmen (Mariner Books, 2024) is “the story of America in the twentieth century,” says Ricky Riccardi. It’s told through the stories of “three men who are not only the most important men in American music, but (who) changed the whole world,” says New Orleans bandleader and trumpeter Wendell Brunious. It tells “an uplifting and unifying story that is especially important now, when times are so fractured,” says Sonny Rollins. It’s a book we need now. And it’s brilliant. Larry Tye brings his new book, in conversation with Greg Stern, CEO of SFJAZZ. The Jazzmen is the story of three revolutionary American musicians, the maestro jazzmen who orchestrated the chords that throb at the soul of twentieth-century America. — Duke Ellington, the grandson of slaves who was christened Edward Kennedy Ellington, was a man whose story is as…
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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
