never a cover charge, but we always implore you to contribute what you can to help us pay the musicians, who deserve far more than they ever receive.  They give us so much; this is our chance to give them a little something back!

The Chuck Peterson Quintet with vocalist Dorothy Lefkovits!

Friday, Feb. 24, series founder Chuck Peterson (sax) brings in a fine quintet of long-time associates — Howard Dudune (reeds), Glen Deardorff (guitar), Dean Reilly (bass) and Tony Johnson (drums) for two sets of classic west coast bebop…   A beautifully sympatico unit that swings with grace, fire and humor…  As for Dorothy, she’s a gem.  You’ll dig it.

2:30 pm – Walker Talks!
on the German poet Holderlin

Once a month, Walker mesmerizes us with his fascinating meanderings amidst the meanings of writers, philosophers, mythologies and mysteries… how he does it, we don’t know, but he’s gained a following that hangs on the gossamer threads of thought that he spins.  Holderlin?  Come and find out…

4:30 pm – WordWind Chorus

Brian Auerbach, Q R Hand Jr. and Lewis Jordan (shown left to right here) are joined by Julian Carroll in an acapella jazz poets aggregation that will set you on your ear.  Four voices augmented by Lewis’s saxophone weave an intricate web of word strands to create heady music indeed.

Founding WordWind member Reginald Lockett, who left us a few years ago, had this to say about Q R:
“Q R Hand’s poetry traverses the terrain of form, music and language. This is an inspired, well crafted poetry that is political in intent and spirited in execution and defies any comparison to any literary predecessors or contemporary schools of thought. Q. R. Hand is an entity unto himself; a true visionary walks among us.”

The ensemble will set the air on fire, delivering deep blues and exhortations to electrify your senses.

Read up here for more on QR and WordWind.

Indian Cinema Beyond Bollywood:  Classic & Contemporary Bengali Movies from Tollywood!

Bird & Beckett goes to the movies… at the Balboa Theatre in San Francisco’s Richmond District… March 16-20

Before there was Bollywood, there was Tollywood!  Named for the Tollygunge neighborhood of Kolkata (Calcutta) in which most of the Bengali-language movie production offices are based, Tollywood has long been the proving ground of many talents later usurped, exploited and made rich & famous by the Mumbai-based Bollywood machine.

At our Balboa Theatre blowout, we’ll cast a huge klieg light on “Nagmoti” — a film from the early 1980s by the now legendary musician, ethnomusicologist and filmmaker Gautam Chattopadhyay.  This dramatic feature film, set in a community of gypsies in the Ganges river delta southeast of Kolkata, won the Silver Lotus award at the National Film Awards, India’s equivalent of the Oscars.  We’ll show it in a 35mm print that’s been in the keeping of the director’s brother ever since Gautam’s untimely death in 1999.  Accompanying the Nagmoti screenings will be live performances by “Bengal and Beyond,” a band that fuses Bengali music and American jazz, led by bassist Bishu Chatterjee (a regular on the Bird & Beckett stage) with carnatic saxophone master Prasant Radhakrishnan.  Back in the 1970s in Kolkata, Bishu played drums and cello in his brother Gautam’s trailblazing folk-rock unit called Mohiner Ghoraguli.

Along with Nagmoti, we’ll show a number of contemporary and classic Bengali-language films– and we’re hoping against hope to present “Aparjita Tumi,” the brand new feature film by award-winning director Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury.  Aparajita Tumi stars the No. 1 Bengali actor Prosenjit and was shot last summer entirely on location in the Bay Area, including key scenes in your favorite neighborhood bookshop, Bird & Beckett, and your favorite “great little place to eat,” Higher Grounds.  Aparajita Tumi premiered in Kolkata in January, and your own favorite bookshop proprietor was there on the scene to soak up the glamor!  In the next week we should know whether the producers are game to let us take a peak before it makes the rounds of the world’s film festival circuit.

So brush up your Bengali… or clean up your reading glasses for the subtitles… and make your way to the Balboa Theatre in mid-March for what promises to be a very big show!

girlchild

Join debut novelist Tupelo Hassman
for a book launch party, with live music

Saturday
Feb. 18th
7 pm to 9 pm

Read the New York Times review here!

The author: Tupelo Hassman
The book: Girlchild (Farrar Strauss Giroux, 2012)
The band: Buckeye Knoll

“Life is a crazy risk, a foolish venture, a journey hardly worth attempting by poor daughters raised by poor daughters who have no maps or guidebooks (and no teeth, either), who receive no justice that doesn’t hurt about the same as the injustice it means to remedy.  This story is your worst white nightmare. Tupelo Hassman’s GIRLCHILD is a triumph and a philosophical treatise on survival.”

–Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of National Book Critics Circle and National Book Award Finalist American Salvage

Author Alan Kaufman in conversation with publisher & writer Brenda Knight on his new memoir, Drunken Angel — Sunday, February 19th – 2:00 pm

Alan Kaufman is a renowned writing coach here in the Bay Area, teaching countless writers the art of the memoir.  He is also a skilled novelist (Matches), memoirist (Jew Boy)  and anthologist (The Outlaw Book of American Poetry, editor, and The Outlaw Book of American Literature, co-editor with Barney Rosset).  Alan’s new book, Drunken Angel, is “the story of a rebel poet’s climb from drunken hell to reclaim the gift he betrayed and to find the daughter he abandoned.”

Brenda Knight, author of Women of the Beat Generation and publisher of Viva Editions and Cleis Press, has done much as a writer to deepen our understanding of the Bay Area literary heritage and as a publisher to expand on that mission by bringing important new voices into print.

View a YouTube piece on Alan and Brenda discussing Alan’s work at this link.

This Sunday… Feb. 19, 4:30-6:30 pm:  The San Francisco Bluegrass and Old-Time Festival co-presents, with our which way west? series:

Dark Hollow

Dark Hollow performs traditional favorites and slam-bang originals with equal gusto. The group’s virtuoso musicianship, love of tunes, melodies, harmonies and drivingbluegrass rhythms blends together to make a traditional sound spiced up with a bit of home-grown joie de vivre, powered by the vocals of leader John Kornhauser.

Info on the entire Blues & Old-Time Festival line-up can be found at this link.  The Festival runs from Feb. 10 to 19th at venues all over town.

Les Gottesman/Bill Crossman – poetry/piano – plus open mic — Monday, February 20th, 7 p.m.

Les Gottesman‘s first published poems were in Ted Berrigan’s C magazine in 1965. More recently, his poems have appeared in Juked, Beatitude, Harper’s,Antioch Review, and Columbia Review. Les has been a teacher and political activist in San Francisco for over 30 years. He received his MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts in 2011. Website: lesgottesman.com

Bill Crossman is a poet, jazz pianist/composer, human rights activist, professor, and author. “John Brown’s Truth,” a musical theater piece he created which includes his poetry, will be performed in 2012 in the Bay Area. Bill frequently performs with violinist India Cooke (India Cooke-Bill Crossman Duo) and with the Troublemakers Union band. At Bird & Beckett, Bill will be reading new poems from his Sound Ground: Poems for the Years Since 9/11.

never a cover charge, but we always implore you to contribute what you can to help us pay the musicians, who deserve far more than they ever receive.  They give us so much; this is our chance to give them a little something back!

The Chuck Peterson Quintet!

Friday, Feb. 24, series founder Chuck Peterson (sax) brings in a fine quintet of long-time associates — Howard Dudune (reeds), Glen Deardorff (guitar), Dean Reilly (bass) and Tony Johnson (drums) for two sets of classic west coast bebop…   A beautifully sympatico unit that swings with grace, fire and humor…  You’ll dig it.

Friday – 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Saturday – Thursday – 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Store hours extended
any night there’s a scheduled event

Live jazz
every Friday, 5:30 to 8:00 pm

Live music, various traditions
every Sunday, 4:30 to 6:30 pm

Special one-off literary programs
most Sunday afternoons before the music

Poetry sessions with an open mic
1st & 3rd Monday of each month, 7:00 to 9:00 pm

Judith Sender & Ramon Sender

Ramon and Judy Sender will be reading from their books.

Judy — a writer and artist, or a wrartist, as she terms it — will read some excerpts from her new book, “Transitions Visible and Invisible.”  Her earlier book, “Lines: Whimsical and Other Wise,” has long been available through Bird & Beckett.  Both books feature her drawings and poems, and express her multifariously whimsical take on things.  She is a retired SFUSD teacher and since, 2001, she has co-curated with her husband, Ramon, the “Odd Monday Series”, first at Noe Valley Ministry and now at the venerable Phoenix Books.

Ramon Sender has a long-standing reputation as an important west coast musician, writer and artist.  In 1961, with Morton Subotnick and Pauline Oliveros, he co-founded the groundbreaking San Francisco Tape Music Center, home to the late artist Bruce Conner and musician Bill Maginnis, both Glen Park figures of great repute.  Composers Terry Riley and John Cage were among the many significant figures that worked with Ramon and his confederates there.

His written works include “Death in Zamora” and the series of Zero books, as well as two classics of the communal ’70s counterculture, Living on the Earth and Being of the Sun.  He’ll read at Bird & Beckett from his most recent book of collected stories and essays, “Planetary Sojourn” and will also share a recent musical  composition.

Don’t miss two San Francisco originals with deep roots in the heyday of the ’60s– and who still remember what it was all like, despite the old saw about “if you remember it, you weren’t there.”  Nonsense!  You’ll get an earful at Bird & Beckett if you make the time to come on down…

 Jazz in the bookshop on Friday… and every Friday
always 5:30 to 8:00 pm

never a cover charge, but we always implore you to contribute what you can to help us pay the musicians, who deserve far more than they ever receive.  They give us so much; this is our chance to give them a little something back!

The Third Quintet!

Friday, Feb. 17, series founders Chuck Peterson (sax), Scott Foster (guitar) and Don Prell (bass) are joined by drummer Omar Aran for two sets of bebop with a west coast lineage… Chuck and Don both got their start in the music in the early 1950s and have been playing jazz at a high level ever since.  Scott and Omar have been top players for only a couple decades each…  You’ll dig it.

Sundays before and after,

The San Francisco Bluegrass and Old-Time Festival co-presents, with our which way west? series, two consecutive Sunday shows at Bird & Beckett!!

Sundays, February 12th and 19th – 4:30 to 6:30 pm

Sunday, Feb. 12th — The Juncos

“Ripping their way through the American roots music landscape in high-energy style, the Santa Cruz-based Juncos are a down-home band that is more throwback than revival. With an appreciation for the acoustic life and a gather-’round-the-mic-y’all recording style, this is a group that understands the strength of a good song and how to let it stand on it’s own. They can coax the sweet out of some harmonies, get the floorboards jumping with their foot-stomping tunes and wind their way through just about any roots-based genre. From jug music and rockabilly to folk, honkytonk and old-timey, the Juncos whip up a thick and hearty musical stew.” – SC Weekly, June 2011

Sunday, Feb. 19th — Dark Hollow

Dark Hollow performs traditional favorites and slam-bang originals with equal gusto. The group’s virtuoso musicianship, love of tunes, melodies, harmonies and drivingbluegrass rhythms blends together to make a traditional sound spiced up with a bit of home-grown joie de vivre, powered by the vocals of leader John Kornhauser.

Info on the entire Blues & Old-Time Festival line-up can be found at this link.  The Festival runs from Feb. 10 to 19th at venues all over town.

Join us and debut novelist Tupelo Hassman for a book launch party, with live music — Saturday, February 18th – 7 pm to 9 pm

The author: Tupelo Hassman
The book: Girlchild (Farrar Strauss Giroux, 2012)
The band: Buckeye Knoll

“Life is a crazy risk, a foolish venture, a journey hardly worth attempting by poor daughters raised by poor daughters who have no maps or guidebooks (and no teeth, either), who receive no justice that doesn’t hurt about the same as the injustice it means to remedy. This story is your worst white nightmare. Tupelo Hassman’s GIRLCHILD is a triumph and a philosophical treatise on survival.” –Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of National Book Critics Circle and National Book Award Finalist American Salvage

Author Alan Kaufman in conversation with publisher & writer Brenda Knight on his new memoir, Drunken Angel — Sunday, February 19th – 2:00 pm

Alan Kaufman is a renowned writing coach here in the Bay Area, teaching countless writers the art of the memoir.  He is also a skilled novelist (Matches), memoirist (Jew Boy)  and anthologist (The Outlaw Book of American Poetry, editor, and The Outlaw Book of American Literature, co-editor with Barney Rosset).  Alan’s new book, Drunken Angel, is “the story of a rebel poet’s climb from drunken hell to reclaim the gift he betrayed and to find the daughter he abandoned.”

Brenda Knight, author of Women of the Beat Generation and publisher of Viva Editions and Cleis Press, has done much as a writer to deepen our understanding of the Bay Area literary heritage and as a publisher to expand on that mission by bringing important new voices into print.

View a YouTube piece on Alan and Brenda discussing Alan’s work at this link.

Les Gottesman/Bill Crossman – poetry/piano – plus open mic — Monday, February 20th, 7 p.m.

Les Gottesman‘s first published poems were in Ted Berrigan’s C magazine in 1965. More recently, his poems have appeared in Juked, Beatitude, Harper’s,Antioch Review, and Columbia Review. Les has been a teacher and political activist in San Francisco for over 30 years. He received his MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts in 2011. Website: lesgottesman.com

Bill Crossman is a poet, jazz pianist/composer, human rights activist, professor, and author. “John Brown’s Truth,” a musical theater piece he created which includes his poetry, will be performed in 2012 in the Bay Area. Bill frequently performs with violinist India Cooke (India Cooke-Bill Crossman Duo) and with the Troublemakers Union band. At Bird & Beckett, Bill will be reading new poems from his Sound Ground: Poems for the Years Since 9/11.

Friday – 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Saturday – Thursday – 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Store hours extended
any night there’s a scheduled event

Live jazz
every Friday, 5:30 to 8:00 pm

Live music, various traditions
every Sunday, 4:30 to 6:30 pm

Special one-off literary programs
most Sunday afternoons before the music

Poetry sessions with an open mic
1st & 3rd Monday of each month, 7:00 to 9:00 pm

a tradition in the neighborhood
every Friday evening since 2002

Kids always welcome & always free!
$10 suggested donation per adult

This Friday, February 3rd, it’s Don Prell’s Seabop Ensemble, featuring series stalwart Don Prell, a Los Angeles native who started his jazz career in the 1950s and was soon a core member of Bud Shank’s renowned quartet — traveling internationally and recording albums on Pacific Jazz, Contemporary and other key record labels associated with the “West Coast Jazz” of the late 50s and early 60s. 

On the first Friday of each month at Bird & Beckett, Don shanghais a seasoned crew of jazz pros, drawing from a pool of talent unmatched by any city in the country outside of New York… Tonight, you’ll hear the powerful & lyrical tenor player Jerry Logas, young bop titan Michael Parsons on piano, and Ulf Bjorkbom, Swedish wonder of the high seas, swinging at the skins…

On subsequent Fridays of each month, it’s Jimmy Ryan’s Quintet on the second Friday, a quartet with Chuck Peterson, Scott Foster, Don Prell and Ron Marabuto on the third Friday, and The Chuck Peterson Quintet on the fourth Friday.  And so it goes!  Anytime we enjoy the luxury of a fifth Friday, we invite in a special guest — in March, it’ll be bassist Dave Parker and his quintet, a high octane group with its roots in late evening Friday nights at the old Red Rock Lounge, which preceded Le P’tit Laurent down at the corner.

Always a good time at Bird & Beckett!  Meet your friends here & enjoy the music!

Glen Park local Bill Maginnis sitting in with the regulars on a recent Friday evening. Bill started his professional career at age 14, and had to get a permit from the ABC, since he was well underage, in order to play jobs at the Yreka Inn, aka "The Snake Pit". Along the way, he's played with everyone from John Cage to Peanuts Hucko, Wingy Malone & Wild Bill Davidson.

A little history of the scene…

Back in late 2002, tenor player Chuck Peterson proposed that he’d make sure we had good musicians every week if we’d just promise to make the venue available.  We took him up on his offer and he made good– recruiting bassist Don Prell and guitarist Scott Foster and adding more players along the way, many of whom have become fixtures on the scene.

Meanwhile, vocalist Dorothy Lefkovits found her way to the shop with guitarist Henry Irvin and drummer Jimmy Ryan for a monthly Sunday session.  Jimmy was quickly added to the Friday roster to fill out the basic working unit there, and when we lost Henry a few years back, Dorothy became a regular on the Friday nights as well.

The band grew to eight pieces on occasion in the old store, and eventually we settled on the current rotation of four groups — Don Prell brings in his “Seabop Ensemble” on the first Friday of the month; Jimmy Ryan brings in a quintet on the second Friday; Scott, Don and Chuck with drummer Ron Marabuto take the third Friday; and Chuck leads his own quintet on the fourth.  All in all, a smash success that’s going strong.