Contributors Betsy Chafcouloff, Rita Delgado, Kathryn A. Johnon and Mary Jo Lazear join editor Marjorie Lasky to read from their pieces included in the new anthology, You’re Doing What? Older Women’s Tales of Achievement and Adventure — which is bursting with 62 memorable first-person tales and photos. In the book, you’ll meet daring older women — like the early-sixties first-time bride finding her future husband on Craigslist; a retired speech therapist starting a clinic in Cambodia; and post-60-year-olds climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro.  You’ll read about women of different races, classes, and sexual orientations facing various challenges and choices as they age. A loving daughter recounts how her mother moved beyond a “bare and unadorned” Mississippi upbringing. A California Chicana counters her mother’s denial of her Mexican heritage. A bisexual polyamorist rejects a life like her mother’s. There are (relatively) young elders – the writer/teacher/poet grappling with her legacy – and older ones –…

As we start to think about our 20th anniversary coming up in May, we at Bird & Beckett think it’s appropriate to reproduce this email from the proprietor to the store’s patrons, dated June 24, 2008: Big Move Coming Up! After nine years in its present location on Diamond Street, Bird & Beckett is moving in September to a new spot in the neighborhood, just around the corner and up the block at 653 Chenery. I’m counting on another twenty years in the book business in Glen Park, and this looks like the best way to secure that idea. Come 2029, maybe I’ll be ready to sell the shop and find a nice spot beneath a cork tree to sniff the flowers and read a book. But first, this… Bird & Beckett’s new space is the one currently occupied by the library, which is packing up August 31st and moving…

Born September 27, 1934, Blanche Bebb passed away on March 10, 2018 at the age of 83. She lived for years on Chenery Street, near the corner of Diamond, with her daughter Karen and granddaughter Jenna, and was a constant presence at the bookshop from the day it opened until a stroke made it impossible for her to stay in her apartment. Even then, she came back to visit whenever she could. But while she lived in Glen Park, she was well known and loved by the friends she made among the neighborhood’s residents and denizens, shopkeepers and clerks, waitresses and bartenders, restaurateurs and service workers– not to mention the vast number of individuals she encountered across the City drawn together by their shared passions for culture and social justice. Her profound feelings for literature, music, art, the theater and the people she respected and cared about were completely intertwined,…

$20 cover; $10 for students, musicians, limited income. On their new recording, “A History of Choro,” Duo Violão + 1 survey the history and evolution of choro music, revealing its rhythmic and harmonic permutations. In the process, they have created an album “coherent in timbre and vision while marvelously varied in its nuances.” Guitarists Rogério Souza and Edinho Gerber from Brazil (Duo Violão) have joined forces with Bay Area-based percussionist Ami Molinelli (the “+ 1”) to make the record, and now for a series of concerts and workshops in the Bay Area, including this concert at Bird & Beckett. According to Molinelli, “The intention for this album overall was to ensure that each song reflects a different musical style within the genre of choro and to showcase reinterpretations of more recognized tunes as well as lesser known compositions.” Their music traces choro’s history from the foundational block of the late…

Scott Barnhill, tenor saxophone Keith Saunders, piano Eric Markowitz, bass Smith Dobson, drums with guest vocalist Louise DeLucchi Scott Barnhill has been a force on the Bay Area jazz scene for decades. Son of the well-traveled drummer Buddy Barnhill and singer Louise DeLucchi, it’s in his blood. Scott has held his own on stage with such jazz superstars as Terrance Blanchard, Charlie Haden, Joe Henderson, Mulgrew Miller, Cedar Walton, Henry Robinette, Joe Gilman, Jeff Alkire, Peppe Merolla, Peter Horvath, and Zigaboo Modeliste. 

The great jazz writer Gene Lees writes, “Stan Getz was once asked his idea of the perfect tenor saxophone soloist. His answer was, ‘My technique, Al Cohn’s ideas, and Zoot’s time.’ The fulfillment of that ideal may well be embodied in thirty-year-old Harry Allen.” Harry is a fifty-two-year-old now, but that only means he’s had another couple of decades of seasoning. Sharing the stage with him is fellow New York tenor giant Grant Stewart, age forty eight… We had the pleasure of booking Grant with local tenor hero Patrick Wolff a couple years ago, and the Bird & Beckett audience will remember that he’s as solid as they come. Both Harry and Grant are held in high regard in the toughest jazz market in the world, New York City, and travel widely in the U.S. and abroad. They’re coming out to the west coast to play a March 10th Palo Alto…

A Reading for Al-Mutanabbi Street Sarah Menefee, Beau Beausoleil, Mahnaz Badihian, Neeli Cherkovski, Rosemary Manno, Jessica Loos,Agneta Falk, Barbara Paschke, Karen Melander Magoon, Jack Hirschman

Faculty, students and friends of the Community Music Center gather to play music from many traditions – classical Chinese to American jazz… and to celebrate the Year of the Pig!