$20 suggested/sliding scale available. Talk about your San Francisco jazz… On the fourth Friday of each month, our weekly jazz in the bookshop series features The 230 Jones Street, Local 6 Literary Jazz Band — in direct line of descent from the Chuck Peterson Trio, which started the whole “jazz in the bookshop” thing 17 years ago. These five musicians  — Ray Loeckle, tenor sax; Jerry Logas, bari sax, clarinet, flute, vocals; Glen Deardorff, guitar; Dean Reilly, bass; Tony Johnson, drums — have all put in decades of work on the local jazz scene, dating back to the early 1950s. The band was originally formed by multi-instrumentalist Chuck Peterson (tenor sax, baritone sax, flute), who was a union activist particularly in his prime years (the 1950s and 1960s) and throughout his career, hence his nod to the address of Local 6 of the American Federation of Musicians, where he and…

$20 cover charge / sliding scale available Dmitri Matheny, flugelhorn Ken French, piano Ron Belcher, bass A gorgeous, charming and intimate evening of music guaranteed

$20 suggested donation; any amount appreciated Grant Levin Quartet: James Mahone, tenor saxophone Grant Levin, piano Chris Amberger, bass Michael Mitchell, drums Pianist Grant Levin has gained great acclaim on the San Francisco jazz scene since his move here in 2001; since that time, Bird & Beckett has been pleased and honored to present him hundreds of times — and we look forward with great anticipation to his last-Sunday-of-the-month bookings through June. He will field a variety of ensembles, drawing on the wealth of fantastic jazz talent the City proudly boasts, exploring a wide range of material. We will accept a limited number of reservations for each date by phone beginning the Monday before the engagement. Should you make a reservation, you’ll need to claim your seat 15 minutes before the show. Thanks for your understanding and cooperation.

$20 cover charge; sliding scale available

Dave Meder $20 cover charge; sliding scale available

We’re transacting business by phone and email during the shelter-in-place period. We have plenty of stock and are happy to place orders for you. One person at a time can come into the vestibule and speak to us through the open top half of the Dutch door. Please give a wide berth to anyone who needs to exit the vestibule!   Store hours are Tuesday to Sunday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.  Closed Mondays. Inquire if you want to arrange delivery or shipping of books.

      “As Hafiz said: ‘Seek life and patience, for the great wheel, with its sleight-of-hand, has a thousand tricks more strange than these.’ His world mirrors ours in a timeless way. The stranger things get, the more familiar they become, to such a poet as Hafiz. As a tutelary presence, to such a storyteller as the years have made me, he becomes more and more distinct, as well as more and more mysterious. This is as it should be. The way I see inside a story is synchronous with the way he sees inside a poem. All I want to do these days is to explore the way such guides inspire me, in the act of composition. “What better place to undertake such tasks as the mandates of heaven lay upon us, than Bird and Beckett? Eric’s live streaming will allow us all to turn into seers of…

Saturday evening, March 28th, jazz flautist Gerald Beckett led a trio to celebrate the release of his new album, “MOOD,” replete with beautiful originals from Gerald’s pen and solid gems from Kenny Barron, Ron Carter, Harold Mabern, Wynton Marsalis and Cyrus Chestnut. Gerald leads a pantheon of great Bay Area jazz talent on “MOOD,” including his sidemen for the evening’s concert, Ari Caprow on guitar and Carl Herder on upright bass. It was a beautiful night. You can listen to it by going to our facebook page and choosing “videos.” Sadly, it will have to hold you for awhile. We’re going to take a pause in the live streaming, as much as we hate to do it. There’s just too much doubt right now about how easily spread this virus is, and we just don’t feel right subjecting our much loved musicians to the risk of contracting it from casual…

We’ll reschedule when the smoke has cleared… sorry to say, it’s necessary… With a hit CD, “No Boundaries” under their belt, Dave Bass’s Afro-Cuban Quintet had been selling out shows and wowing audiences up and down the coast until, well, you know… Dave Bass, piano Jeff Sanford, reeds and flute Kerry Kashiwagi, bass Mario Salomon, timbales and percussion David Frazier, congas and percussion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnDrUkTcKIA