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!
$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.
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$20 cover charge; sliding scale available
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Dave Meder $20 cover charge; sliding scale available
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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.
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“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…
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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…
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Saturday evening, March 28, 2020, 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” and browsing through… but for your convenience, here’s the link. It was such an exquisite show, as we’re sure you’ll agree! Sadly, we had to then pause for a minute and reassess, causing us to postpone the promised Todd Swenson/Derek Evans date planned for 3/29. Too much doubt existed at that crucial moment about how easily spread this covid19…
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Continuing on! Live jazz in the bookshop every Friday since October 2002, with never a missed Sunday. No virus afoot will stop us! Tonight, guitarist Justin Rock brings in his mighty and mighty eclectic trio, Bastet for two sets of adventurous jazz without borders. Justin Rock, guitar – Giulio Xavier Cetto, bass – Mike Quigg, drums
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2 out of 3 ain’t bad! Joshua Raoul Brody & Joe “the Quilter” Cunningham ~~Potrero Hillbillies~~ regale you with song today at 4:30pm in a facebook live stream from Bird & Beckett! you don’t have to “belong” to facebook, or even like it to view the live stream! if you’re hooked on the fb, well that’s your own business & here’s your just reward! you’ll find the show here: https://www.facebook.com/pg/bird.and.beckett/videos/?ref=page_internal watch for the little red box that says “live” — that’s the one you want to click on —
Read MoreIf you need books and can’t afford them, let us know. We have more than we need. The clearance cart will be in the vestibule every day, and the books there are now free for those who can’t afford them, despite any markings. Please help yourself if you have scant resources that you need for food, rent and pin money. That said, the books are subject to being handled by folks looking through them, so please don a pair of gloves and ask for a bag before you pick any out, then take ’em home, wipe them down with alcohol, wash your hands and let them sit for a couple of days before you delve into them. Reasonable precautions, please! If you can afford them, please leave them for others or buy them at the small cost marked (tax included on the clearance cart books) and donate an equal number…
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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
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Well, that was something special! Go to our facebook page (facebook/bird.and.beckett.com) and check out the saved video of the whole two hours. Revelatory. Delightful. Essential! https://www.facebook.com/bird.and.beckett/ You won’t be sorry! Tonight, 3/21, Kai’s doing a solo set, and then is joined by pianist Javier Santiago and bassist Giulio Xavier Cetto for the rest of the evening, right up to 10pm! No in-store audience during the current kerfuffle, but folks are caught the live stream and the spirit worldwide! Check it out this on Bird & Beckett’s facebook page. No need to be a facebook member to see the stream. To make it easy for you, we’ll put a link here when the show starts at 7:30pm. Try this one for now. Jazz club… when lights are low! every Saturday in Bird & Beckett’s own purple grotto! Catch it live or catch up with it later on our website and fb…
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 Glen Park has never been without live jazz on a Friday night since the Chuck Peterson Trio got the ball rolling! This time, with Gaea Schell on piano and John Wiitala on bass, for the first time in the store’s 20-year history or presenting live jazz by the Bay Area’s fantastic musicians, we had no live audience due to a little thing going around, globally. But we streamed the performance out to the world and people all over creation got a great show. You can see and hear the evidence at this link: Gaea Schell & John Wiitala Duo Live at Bird & Beckett, 3/20/20 Folks tuned in from the neighborhood, all around the Bay Area, down in Ventura, over in Australia… and donated generously online through the website. Enough that we were able to pay $200 to each of the musicians for their fine artistry and generous spirit. And…
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Rebecca Kleinmann is an acclaimed flutist, singer, and composer with a twenty year professional career marked by diversity and improvisation. In the words of Latin Grammy Nominated pianist and composer, Jovino Santos Neto, “Rebecca plays flute with the passion of a flamenco dancer.†An explorer at heart, she rockets and flows between genres, one day leading The Rebecca Kleinmann Jazz Quartet with pianist Alex Conde, bassist Gary Brown, and drummer Marlon Aldana, the next day performing with a Brazilian Choro ensemble, and then later at night jamming in flamenco juergas. Rebecca’s international career has taken her to perform on stages in Argentina, Brazil, Africa, Europe and Australia including Melbourne’s International Women in Jazz Festival, SESC in São Paulo, Birdland in New York City, the Blue Whale in Los Angeles as well as being featured at the SF Jazz Center, the San Jose Jazz Festival, Yoshi’s San Francisco and Oakland, Piedmont Piano, the Sound Room, the Oracle Arena…
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SUPPORT BIRD & BECKETT - DONATE TODAY!
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
