Get the jump on Black History Month! Every February, the brilliant Chicago percussionist Kahil El’Zabar, a renowned leader in avant garde African-American music for five decades, takes his Ethnic Heritage Ensemble on the road, criss-crossing the continent with a brilliant program of music — “advanced frequencies” deeply rooted in America’s true classical music, the music we most frequently call “jazz,”  a music itself deeply rooted in four centuries of African-American experience, and rooted more deeply still in the cultures and histories of a range of African cultures from which hundreds of thousands of people were abducted, brought in chains and held in slavery. A devastating history from which a rich, beautiful and indomitable culture has flowered time and again. For the last four years, Bird & Beckett has been the first stop on the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble’s Black History Month tour. From here, Kahil, with Corey Wilkes on trumpet and…

$20 suggested donation; any amount appreciated It’s Macy Blackman’s Mighty Fine Trio! Macy is a piano professor of the first water. Says jazz writer Andrew Gilbert in Berkeleyside, “Macy is as comfortable rockin’ Ellington and Gershwin as he is swingin’ Joe Turner and Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson.” But it’s New Orleans’ music that’s at the heart of so much of Macy Blackman’s music, ever since the mid 70’s when he began to specialize in New Orleans R&B after forming a tight bond of friendship with one of its masters, drummer Charles “Hungry” Williams. As for his trio, Nancy Wright is a hard swinging tenor player and a dynamite singer with a reputation, cds and performance history that just doesn’t quit. And bassist Bing Nathan has been the coolest cat and the hippest rhythm player on the San Francisco scene for decades.

Please join us for an evening dubbed “Writers Painting Their Voices” as author John Curl reads from his powerful novel of McCarthy era resistance, The Outlaws of Maroon, joined by poet and literary critic Jack Foley performing some of this poems in tandem with his partner Sangye Land. These writers will use their voices to paint pictures, celebrate life, and remind us of the importance of love, community, and friendship. A deeply felt critique of our times is implicit and explicit in John’s work. The recent publication of John’s novel, The Outlaws of Maroon, was spurred by a near-death experience which caused John to recognize the importance of its message for our times, and to realize that his book had to be published now. The Outlaws of Maroon is an adult novel about the world of children. In McCarthy-era New York City, fourth graders find a forgotten room in the…

San Francisco Poet Laureate Kim Shuck in association with the Academy of American Poets and Bird & Beckett Books presents Fire Thieves 7 Fire Thieves Board the Peace Train Bird and Beckett Books, 653 Chenery Street in San Francisco Wednesday, January 29th at 7pm (doors at 6:30pm) Joyce Jenkins, Gary Gach, Judy Bernhard, Val Ibarra, Milena Garrone and others share their meditations on the subject of Peace. The Fire Thieves is a monthly intergenerational poetry series that will culminate with The Fire Thieves Anthology in 2020. Each reading features 2 Elders, 2 Middle Age and 2 Youth poets performing featured sets of work at a different landmark in San Francisco each month. Bird & Beckett is a 20-year old institution in the Glen Park neighborhood of San Francisco highly regarded for both its rich stock of new and used books and for its vibrant poetry and music series (programmed by…

Jun Jun Li invites you to Bird & Beckett this evening with this promise! “Tonight, you are going to a one of the kind life experience! Storytelling by Jun Jun, Dance performance by Jun Ting, Live music, Live painting, Living souls… Looking forward to see your beautiful faces at 7pm.” Jun Li’s Deep Sea in the Seed lavishly displays her abstract expressive oil paintings and poetry. Please join us at Bird & Beckett Tuesday evening, January 28th, to hear Jun Jun read a few of her poems and discuss the paintings these poems accompany in this stunning bilingual book of her work. About the Artist/Author: I paint as I live, with an intention to show that life is about realizing possibilities. My work is a dynamic encounter with nature, perception, and challenges that lead us towards a place of insight and learning. Born and educated in China, my paintings and poetry…

$20 suggested donation; pay what you can. 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.

A rich gathering of poets will celebrate the work of Bob Kaufman, collected in a new volume from City Lights Books, edited by Neeli Cherkovski, Raymond Foye and Tate Swindell, with a forward by devorah major. Lawrence Ferlinghetti said of Kaufman, “He was an original voice. No one else talked like him. No one else wrote poetry like him.” Readers will include: devorah major Jack Hirschman Tate Swindell Gail Mitchell Neeli Cherkovski Michael Warr Agneta Falk Jessica Loos Jerry Ferraz   Kaufman’s importance as a key Beat Generation poet cannot be understated. His understanding of the post war world expressed through a surrealist and profoundly moral critical lens was unrivaled among  his peers. Read a recent New York Times review linked here of this important collection, drawn from Kaufman’s published books Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness, The Golden Sardine (now out of print), The Ancient Rain and the posthumous Cranial Guitar, and…

$20 cover charge; sliding scale available James Mahone Quartet James Mahone, saxophone Eddie Mendenhall, piano Giulio Xavier Cetto, bass Hamir Atwal, drums Two sets of jazz standards by four of the Bay Area’s very best! James Mahone got his start as a founding member of the legendary Los Angeles jazz combo called Black Note, alongside bassist Marcus Shelby. Black Note launched into the jazz stratosphere in 1991 and recorded four albums — for Billy Higgins’ World Stage Records, Red Records, Columbia and Impulse — between 1991 and 1996.

$20 suggested donation/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…

Eveline Kanes is a poet and literary translator . Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals. Her book translations range from biography and fiction, to history, poetry and sociology. Her chap book, A Coin Worn Thin, appeared in 2015. Her current work is under submission. Susan Dambroff is a poet, performer, and teacher. Her poetry chapbook, “Conversations with Trees” was published in 2018 by Finishing Line Press. Her newest manuscript ,“A Chair Keeps the Floor Down”, dives deeply into her long career as a Special Eduucation teacher It is now under submission. Susan has been published in many literary journals and anthologies. Her first book of poems, “Memory in Bone” was published in a limited letterpress edition in1984 by Black Oyster Press. She performs throughout the Bay Area in Spoken Duets, a poetic collaboration with Chris Kammler. MaryLee McNeal writes both poetry and fiction. Her poetry chapbook The Space…

Amy Glynn is an award-winning poet and essayist whose work appears widely in journals and anthologies including The Best American Poetry. Her first poetry collection, A Modern Herbal, was published in 2013 by Measure Press; her second, Romance Language, is forthcoming in early 2020. She has received the Carolyn Kizer Award from Poetry Northwest, the SPUR Award of the Association of Western Writers, two James Merrill House fellowships, and scholarships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences. She currently serves as Poet Laureate for the cities of Lafayette and Orinda, CA. Lisa Rosenberg has a keen interest in the commonality between arts and sciences, and in accessibly framing that territory for exploration in many contexts and settings.  She holds degrees in physics and creative writing. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University, she worked for many years as an engineer in the space program, founded a marketing…

From ancient times on, each generation spins its own visionary accountings out of threads of events only the universal psyche has ever fully embodied in memory. Whether in times of cultural evolution or devolution, fairy tales entertain, disturb, and edify, existing as offerings for us to contemplate, even as the ages roll on. Each fairy tale is one of a kind, a tree of sound in the human imagination. The last Sunday of each  month, at 2:30 pm, Walker Brents III offers thoughts on a topic philosophical, poetic, mythological or whatnautical, as suits his plan. Always enlightening, curious, intriguing. Donations appreciated.

Be sure you’re on our email list, and keep an eye on this website! Friday, Jan. 3 we’re right back at it with Maestro Myron Cohen on the pots beating out a rhythm with el pianista Keith-0 Saunders et le bassiste extraordinaire Ollie le Dudek. Get down here at 5:30 with a fistful of dollars for the musicians and we’ll get this ball rolling! Lavay Smith is here with Danny Armstrong on trombone Saturday night, and Sunday, Avotcja brings in the fine, exuberant cats that make up her band Modupue. Curious what’s in the cards for us all? So are we! Come out Sunday midday at 2pm to hear from mystery writer Bevan Atkinson, as she pulls out her tarot deck to plumb the possibilities! Her best selling series, The Tarot Mysteries, is now five-books strong, with more to come. And rounding out the first weekend of the year, Monday…

Mourning the death of the poet… celebrating the life of the poet Friends read for street peddler, artist and poet Steve Dalachinsky, a legendary figure of the New York loft world who died of a brain hemorrhage September 15th, 2019, two weeks shy of his 73rd birthday, the day after his vibrant reading at an event celebrating Ray Johnson’s “A Book About Death — The Last Waltz” which followed hard on the heels of Steve’s attendance at an afternoon performance by the Sun Ra Arkestra. Friends including Jessica Loos, Tate Swindell, Clark Coolidge, Neeli Cherkovski, Bernard Meisler, John Held, Jokie Wilson, Victoria Brill, Marina Lazzara, Walter Earl, Donald Robinson and Bruce Ackley will read and perform at the event. Our time is limited to two hours, so we encourage you to leave a poem or remembrance if you’re unable to take the mic due to time constraints.      …

$20 suggested donation; any amount appreciated The Hard Bop Collective Daniel Casares, tenor sax; Jordan Samuels, guitar; Tomoko Funaki, bass; Austin Lee Harris, drums. Swingin’ and boppin’ since 2011 for San Francisco’s party set!