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Saturday, May 19 – 2:00 to 6:00 pm

Big Bash at the Clubhouse

A once-in-awhile fundraising blowout at the Miraloma Clubhouse on O’Shaughnessy Blvd.

Music, food & community come together every few years at the little wooden shack just up the canyon road from Glen Park, and just down the hill from the Ruth Asawa High School of the Arts — it’s a Saturday afternoon party to raise money for the bookshop’s nonprofit arts organization, the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project.

$10 buys you admission — we’ll also sell food & drink, raffle off good stuff, and encourage you to make a tax-deductible donation to the nonprofit.  Entertainment line-up yet to be announced, but we’re quite sure you’ll enjoy it.

Proceeds from the benefit, and your direct contributions to the nonprofit, help us finance our ambitious program of twice-weekly music events, twice-monthly poetry readings, monthly literary talks, and numerous other one-off cultural events at the bookshop.

Here we are in mid-May, and we’ve only got enough funds in the BBCLP coffers for about three months of operating expenses — and we rely on those coffers to help pay the store rent so that the BBCLP will have a home to present its many programs… So please buy a ticket and come! and please consider making an additional tax-deductible contribution to get us through to the end of the year!  It takes a village to support a cultural center!

Sunday, May 20 – 2:00 pm

The Rix Journal: Vermont to Gold Rush era San Francisco

Historian Lynn Bonfield discusses the document and her work

Lynn Bonield, former director of the San Francisco Labor Archives, now divides her time between Glen Park and Peachham, Vermont, where she was first drawn by the story of the Rix family — having chanced in 1972 upon the unique Gold Rush era journal of husband and wife Alfred and Chastina Rix among uncatalogued materials in the stacks at the San Francisco Historical Society.  The journal has just recently been beautifully published as New England to Gold Rush California: The Journal of Alfred and Chastina W. Rix, 1849-1854, edited with commentary by Lynn, from the Arthur W. Clark Co. imprint of the Unversity of Oklahoma Press.

Beginning on their wedding day in Peacham on July 29, 1849, Alfred and Chastina kept a dual journal, alternating the task of bringing it up to date each day with revealingly intimate reflections as well as a simple record of their daily life together.  Like many Eastern men of the time, Alfred soon got the gold bug and came west in late 1851 to seek fortune; Chastina stayed behind for a year with their newborn, then followed with the child in the spring of 1853.  The journal first stayed with her in Peacham, giving us a vital picture of the life of a woman with child left behind by an adventurer drawn to the promised land of California.  When she travels to California, the journal travels seperately with a shipment of household effects; and in her final Peacham entry she notes that if that shipment never arrives in San Francisco, this record  too would be lost.  But indeed, she and their son reach San Francisco in February 1953 after 34 days of travel, and the household effects and journal arrive several months later, in May, so that the couple is able to continue their habit of dual, alternating daily entries in San Francisco – at least until first Alfred and then Chastina lose interest in continuing it about a year later.  Within another three years, Chastina is suddenly dead, just ten months after their second son’s birth.  A single concluding entry is made by Alfred several months after her death before he moves on with his life.

Lynn has done a masterful job of editing this beautiful book, which presents the entire journal with clarifying footnotes and insightful accompanying commentary.  An exciting journal and a prodigious accomplishment of scholarship.  Please join us!

Read more on Lynn’s blog at:  http://bonfield-lynn.blogspot.com/

 Sunday, May 20 – 4:30-6:30 pm

Craig Ventresco-Meredith Axelrod-Marty Eggers

popular music of the jazz age

which way west? Sunday concert series
all ages welcome.
your donations help us pay the band!

Tunes of the ragtime & vaudeville era played by three string players soaked in the atmosphere of the time — each an expert practitioner of this turn-of-the-century American music.  Craig is a uniquely talented guitarist — known by fellow guitar and old-time music practitioners internationally for his ear for the intricacies of the music of that bygone era, for his melodic skill, and for his intense rhythmic drive.  His duo with Meredith is heard regularly at Cafe Divine in San Francisco’s North Beach, and with uncanny ease she thoroughly inhabits the music with her vocals and guitar work.  As for Marty, he’s a stalwart bassist in traditional music circles on the west coast and further afield, and dates his association with Craig back to the trio called Bo Grumpus, which they formed  in 1988 when Craig first moved out to San Francisco from Maine.

Monday, May 21 – 7:00 pm

Tom Church & Dan Brady

POETS!

PLUS AN OPEN MIC 1st & 3rd Monday of each month, Hosted by Jerry Ferraz
Tom is an underground filmmaker and a writer who transgresses over the boundaries of “good taste” as a matter of course.  Dan is a slightly sardonic commentator on the less reasonable temdencies of the society that inhabits us.  You? you’re the poet in the open mic, free to do what you want — within our somewhat proscribed time limits.  As for Jerry Ferraz, the long-time host and organizer of our twice monthly series, he’s one of a kind — a San Francisco native with a very old, and very well traveled soul.

Sunday, May 27 – 2:30 pm

Walker Talks!

Hannah Arendt:
Political Philosopher

Each month, Walker Brents III addresses a topic of his choosing, be it a poet, a philosopher, a bit of mythology… this month, he’ll explore the work of the most renowned twentieth-century theorist of totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt.  Born in Germany in 1906, Arendt fled with her family to Paris in 1933 and emigrated to America in 1941.  Per the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, she held academic positions at a number of American universities until her death in 1975, and is best known for two works that had a major impact both within and outside the academic community. The first, The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, was a study of the Nazi and Stalinist regimes that generated a wide-ranging debate on the nature and historical antecedents of the totalitarian phenomenon. The second, The Human Condition, published in 1958, was an original philosophical study that investigated the fundamental categories of the vita activa (labor, work, action). In addition to these two important works, Arendt published a number of influential essays on topics such as the nature of revolution, freedom, authority, tradition and the modern age. At the time of her death in 1975, she had completed the first two volumes of her last major philosophical work, The Life of the Mind, which examined the three fundamental faculties of the vita contemplativa (thinking, willing, judging).

Sunday, May 27 – 4:30-6:30 pm

Tango No. 9

Original – nuevo – classical

which way west? sunday concert series
all age welcome. 
your donations help us pay the band!

A couple times a year, we’re lucky to have Tango No. 9 on the Bird & Beckett stage.  Terrific musicians playing compositions from a wonderfully deep and soulful genre of music.  Accordionist Isabel Douglas will return to the fold for this performance, before she returns to her wandering ways with other projects.  She joins Catharine Clune, violinist and leader of the band; Joshua Raoul Brody, pianist; Greg Stephens, trombonist; and Zoltan di Bartolo, vocalist for what is sure to be a marvelous program of classic, nuevo and original tangos.

Sunday, June 3 – 2:00 pm

Luxorius!

Translator Art Beck

Art Beck has devised an extended set of translations of the poems of Luxorius, the 6th century (c.e.) provincial Roman poet who lived in North Africa during the time of the fall of the Western Roman Empire.  Beck first published some of these translations in the early 1980s, but has expanded and extended these to book length.

Sunday, June 3 – 4:30 to 6:30 pm

Joe Warner Trio

young players – classic jazz!

which way west? Sunday concert series
all ages welcome.
your donations help us pay the band!

jazz trio with pianist Warner and drummer Alex Nash

Monday, June 4 – 7:00 pm

Tinker Greene & Carrie Hunter

POETS!

PLUS AN OPEN MIC 1st & 3rd Monday of each month, Hosted by Jerry Ferraz
Tinker Greene moved here in 1980. Originally from Vermont, he has spent time in New York City, followed by a decade in BurlingtonVT where he served a lively poetry community as a coordinator. In San Francisco he has photographed, hiked the wilderness, and more recently, issued a series of well-received chapbooks of his own poems, which he distributes for free. He will be reading new work.
Carrie Hunter received her MFA/MA in the Poetics program at New College of California, edits the small chapbook press, ypolita press, and is a member of the Black Radish Books publishing collective. Recent poems appear in Big Bell, TH.CE, and in the video journal Jupiter 88. Chapbooks include Vorticells (Cygist Press), A Musics (Arrow as Aarow), Angel, Unincorporated (Lew Gallery editions), and four chapbooks with the Dusi/e-chap Kollektiv. Her book The Incompossible was published in 2011 by Black Radish Books. She lives in San Francisco.

Sunday, June 10 – 2:30 pm

Poet Alice Rogoff

Barge Wood

New work by a key local poet, co-editor of the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal.

Sunday, June 10 – 4:30-6:30 pm

Maurice Tani: 77 El Deora

which way west? Sunday concert series
all ages welcome.
your donations help us pay the band!

Pure country music in a honky tonk vein shading into some dark and swirling  “hillbilly noir” — from one of the very best alt-country performers/composers on the local scene.  If you like  George Jones with your George Dickel and Patsy Cline with your PBR, that’s a good starting point… then be prepared dive ever deeper into the heartbreak and the American dreamscape…

Sunday, June 17 – 2:00 pm

Matthew Keuter, Matt Sherling & Daniel Suarez

Three Poets

details to follow

Sunday, June 17 – 4:30 pm

Orion’s Joy of Jazz

which way west? Sunday concert series
all ages welcome.
your donations help us pay the band!

Ruben Salcido, sax; Steve McQuarry, piano; Ron Crotty, bass; Orion Edmonson, drums

Monday, June 18 – 7:00 pm

Noel Black, Cralan Kelder & Sunnylyn Thibodeaux

Poets! plus open mic

PLUS AN OPEN MIC 1st & 3rd Monday of each month, Hosted by Jerry Ferraz
Noel Black lives in Colorado Springs with his wife, artist Marina Eckler, and their son Ursen. Co-founder with Ed Berrigan of LOG Magazine and publisher of the Angry Dog Midget Editions in the late 1990s, he has since worked as a writer and producer for a wide variety of media outlets including The Stranger and WNYC. He currently works as a producer for KRCC public radio. He is the author of six chapbooks, including Hulktrans (Owl Press, 2008) and In The City of Word People (Blue Press, 2008). His most recent book of poetry is USELYSSES (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011).
Cralan Kelder was born in 1970 and grew up between California and The Netherlands. An anthropologist by training, he has edited numerous literary magazines, including Full Metal Poem and Retort. His latest book is Give Some Word, published by Shearsman. Previous books include: Lemon Red (Coracle 2005), and City Boy (Longhouse 2007). He lives in Amsterdam with his wife, the evolutionary biologist Toby Kiers, and their children.
Sunnylyn Thibodeaux grew up in Louisiana and later moved to San Francisco, California, where she lives with her husband, fellow poet and co-publisher of Auguste Press and Lew Gallery Editions, Micah Ballard. Her first full length collection, Palm to Pine, was published by Bootstrap Press in 2011.

Sunday, June 24 – 4:30 pm

Jinx Jones & his Jazzabilly Allstars

which way west? Sunday concert series
all ages welcome.
your donations help us pay the band!

more details to follow soon

Sunday, July 1 – 4:30 pm

Buena Vista Jazz

which way west? Sunday concert series
all ages welcome.
your donations help us pay the band!

more details to follow soon

Monday, July 2 – 7:00 pm

Gail Mitchell & Jane Rades

POETS!

PLUS AN OPEN MIC 1st & 3rd Monday of each month, Hosted by Jerry Ferraz

Sunday, July 8 – 4:30-6:30 pm

Natalie Cressman’s Pentagram

which way west? Sunday concert series
All ages welcome!
Your donations help us pay the band.

An afternoon of entrancingly rhythmic music that stretches across stylistic boundaries. 

Featuring:
Natalie Cressman: trombone, vocals, compositions
Ivan Rosenberg: trumpet
Samora Pinderhughes: piano
Jonathan Stein: bass
Michael Mitchell: drums

The 20-year-old trombonist of the Trey Anastasio Band (Phish) will be performing in the SF Bay Area for the first time in 2012 at Bird and Beckett Books this July. The project’s vision is to expose the elasticity of genres, to push away musical boundaries and allow styles to blend into one another, and in the process create something refreshing and universal. Drawing on her upbringing saturated with Brazilian and Cuban rhythms, Cressman organically combines elements of jazz, folk, Indian music, and these African-based rhythms to form a refreshing hybrid unique to her own musical life experience. 

According to Indie Music Reviewer Magazine, which gave her debut album 5 stars, “what is fantastic about “Unfolding” is though it’s a jazz record, the songs are so beautiful and easily comprehendible that for a moment you don’t even realize that it’s jazz you are listening to. Even those who don’t have an ear for this genre will find the music enjoyable. When listening you feel what Cressman is playing, and when there are no lyrics, the music speaks just as clearly… Musicians as talented as Cressman are a breath of fresh air….a hidden gem!” 

Advance copies of the album will be available for sale. For more information about Natalie Cressman, visit http://www.nataliecressman.com

Sunday, July 15 – 4:30 pm

Noel Jewkes Quintet

which way west? Sunday concert series
all ages welcome.
your donations help us pay the band!

more details to follow
details to follow

Monday, July 16 – 7:00 pm

Jerry Mankin & Carlos Suarez

POETS!

PLUS AN OPEN MIC 1st & 3rd Monday of each month, Hosted by Jerry Ferraz

Sunday, July 22 – 4:30 pm

Charles Hamilton Quartet

which way west? Sunday concert series
all ages welcome.
your donations help us pay the band!

details to follow

Sunday, July 29 – 4:30 pm

Craig Ventresco, Meredith Axelrod & Rick Elmore

which way west? Sunday concert series
all ages welcome.
your donations help us pay the band!

details to follow

Sunday, August 5 – 4:30 pm

Barbara Hunter Quartet

which way west? Sunday concert series
all ages welcome.
your donations help us pay the band!

details to follow

Monday, August 6 – 7:00 pm

Ronald Sauer & Steve Schwartz

POETS!

PLUS AN OPEN MIC 1st & 3rd Monday of each month, Hosted by Jerry Ferraz

Sunday, August 12 – 4:30 pm

Bright Side Band

which way west? Sunday concert series
all ages welcome.
your donations help us pay the band!

details to follow

Monday, August 20 – 7:00 pm

David Beckman & Ed Coletti

POETS!

PLUS AN OPEN MIC 1st & 3rd Monday of each month, Hosted by Jerry Ferraz

Monday, September 3 – 7:00 pm

Virginia Barrett & Bobby Colem

POETS!

PLUS AN OPEN MIC 1st & 3rd Monday of each month, Hosted by Jerry Ferraz

Monday, October 15 – 7:00 pm

Christopher Bernard & Philip Fried

POETS!

PLUS AN OPEN MIC 1st & 3rd Monday of each month, Hosted by Jerry Ferraz

Here are a few of the things the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project regularly brings to Glen Park:

Walker Talks!

a monthly literary talk

The last Friday of every month (except July, August & December), Walker Brents III holds his audience pretty much spellbound with his wide-ranging investigations into topics literary,  mythological and otherwise  — in the past, his subjects have ranged from William Blake to Bob Dylan, Shakespeare to the Shanameh, the Kalevala to the story of Layla and Majnun…

POETS!

Featured poets + open mic

On the first and third Monday of each month, peripatetic bard & troubadour Jerry Ferraz hosts a poetry reading that showcases local legends, traveling poets passing through and folks from around the Bay who deserve a shot at finding receptive ears.  These readings also feature an open mic — sometimes wonderful from beginning to end, and always bearing at least a gem or two that make the evening worthwhile.  Patronage by Carolta del Portillo makes it possible for us to pay a small honorarium to the featured poets each time, a rarity in reading series off the college campuses… your additional dollar or two tossed in the bucket at the readings makes it that much better.

which way west?

a weekly concert series offering
jazz, acoustic americana, world and classical music
our Sunday shows run from 4:30 to 6:30 pm
and are presented in two sets –
beginning at 4:30 and 5:30 pm.
$10 per adult suggested donation; children free.
No one turned away for lack of funds!

Our Sunday concert series started in earnest when we moved into our current storefront in 2007, and allows us to accommodate a gamut of musical styles and performers.  From North Africa to Pakistan to Philly to Bakersfield to the hollers of Appalachia, and points west, east, north and south.  A great variety of musical disciplines and cultures is represented by individuals who have made the Bay Area their home but who carry with them traditions from the places where they grew up and came of age. We attempt in this series to present musicians rooted by birth in the styles in which they play, though many a sideman on these dates has come to the music honestly, through close exposure to native practitioners.  Through the very substantial generosity of the Conner Family Trust we’re able to augment your donations at the shows to ensure that the performers are paid adequately for their efforts.

which way west?  Well, it’s always the same way, we suppose, but what you find when you set out may depend on where you’re starting from!

 jazz in the bookshop!

San Francisco’s longest running
neighborhood jazz party
every friday evening since oct. 2002
always 5:30 to 8:00 pm
$10 per adult suggested donation
kids welcome & free!
no one turned away for lack of funds

The cornerstone of the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project’s offerings at Bird & Beckett is this weekly series of jazz dates.  The neighborhood really turns out to revel in the music and the company, and it’s done so ever since tenor player Chuck Peterson got the series going nearly nine years ago.  Well over 450 Fridays have elapsed, with never a missed beat.  Come hear what it’s all about.  Jazz in a bebop / straight-ahead mode by some consummate long-time professionals and many of the best of the Young Turks on the local scene…  Your donations at the shows make up the lion’s share of what we use to pay the performers each week, augmented as necessary from our general fund raised through the direct annual contributions to the nonprofit by “people like you.”

First Friday of each month – Don Prell’s Seabop Ensemble – bassist Prell is a veteran of the 1950s LA-based Bud Shank Quartet and 30 years with the San Francisco Symphony. He’s a fiercely avid jazz player, willing to play anywhere and any time and has been a key to keeping our weekly jazz series going these many years.

Each month, Don assembles a terrific combo from a repertory company of great players, which on any give session might include Jim Grantham or Jerry Logas on reeds; guitarists like Scott Foster, Ray Scott and Bob Brumbeloe; pianists Michael Parsons and Don Alberts; drummers Chris Bjorkbom, Omar Aran and Glen Iwaoka.

Second Friday of each month – The Jimmy Ryan Quintet – drummer Ryan learned the trade in L.A. in the ’50s as well, and hit the San Francisco scene in 1960 — and never looked back.  Jimmy has played with legendary musicians like Putter Smith, Vince Wallace, Kent Glenn and Bishop Norman Willliams, putting in significant time at legendary San Francisco clubs like Jimbo’s Bop City and the Gathering Cafe.

For his Bird & Beckett dates, trumpeter Henry Hung and trombonist Danny Grewen, two active young players on the local scene, give a rich, fiery and romantic tone to the front line, while guitarist Scott Foster, a Bird & Beckett favorite since the beginning, handles the chordal duties and spins out beautiful lines with aplomb, and bassist Bishu Chatterjee lays down a reliably steady and creative bass line.

Third Friday of each month – Peterson/Prell/Foster/Marabuto — This band is made up of three of the original founders of our jazz in the bookshop series plus a new addition…  Chuck Peterson, tenor sax, was actually the one who got it all going, back in late 2002, when he told us he’d make sure we always had good musicians if we’d just guarantee them a venue — and he’s more than kept his word.  He’s a veteran of the 1950s San Francisco scene and the 1960s live tv bands (remember Don Sherwood? and did you know Tennessee Ernie Ford used a live jazz combo in his local tv show here as well?).  Chuck’s career continued with decades in the pit orchestras of the San Francisco theatre district and playing bari sax in the Rudy Salvini Big Band…  now he travels down as often as he can from his digs in Santa Rosa to keep the jazz flame burning at Bird & Beckett.  Scott Foster, guitar, plays with a fluidity and grace that brings the classic Blue Note era guitarists immediately to mind; he too has been on these dates since the beginning and is at the core of the jazz sound we like best.  You can follow him up to North Beach most Friday nights after the gig here and catch him at Rose Pistola.  As for Don Prell, bass, we already filled you in on a bit of his background above in describing his Seabop affiliation.  Suffice to say, we couldn’t claim our unbroken string of Friday jazz sessions without his crazy enthusiasm for the music and for playing at every possible chance, and his creativity is unbounded.  Ron Marabuto, drums, son of the key local pianist John Marabuto, anchors the group with the unquestionable skill derived from decades of work with the top straight-ahead and latin jazz professionals on both coasts.

Fourth Fridays — The 230 Jones Street, Local 6 Literary Jazz Band — aka The Chuck Peterson Quintet, with vocalist Dorothy Lefkovits.  Chuck finishes out the month’s schedule of Fridays with four long-time associates who have been at the top of the jazz scene locally and nationally for six decades.  Reed player Howard Dudune plays with the easy grace of Lester Young and a swinging humor all his own, while guitarist Glen Deardorff drives the rhythm with a fierce insouciance.  Bassist Dean Reilly, one of the most respected elder statesmen of the local jazz scene and a well traveled pro, looks , acts and plays like a youngster with his first ducktail.  And drummer Tony Johnson, still sporting the Aussie accent of his own youth, swings effortlessly and keeps time with unerring precision.  All in all, a wonderful band — especially when you factor in the singer Dorothy Lefkovits who joins the band for a few tunes on each set.  When just a teen, she graced the stage at Harlem’s Apollo Theater and she’s still charming audiences with ease.