All welcome! Musicians, be our guests. Audience, help us pay the trio! Bring a twenty if you’re able, and consider donating to the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project, the 501(c)3 we use to fund our music, poetry and other cultural programming. That’s what makes it work when audiences can’t carry the burden of paying the talent. We’ve got a lot of talent in San Francisco, spanning the generations.

Raquel Baena – trombone and vocals Justin Flynn – saxophones Dan Neville – marimba and vibraphone Andres Fonseca – drums and percussion Juan Sebastian Monsalve – bass and musical director $20-$30 sliding scale cover charge; byob. Balsa de Fuego gathers Panhispanic rhythms and music such as Cumbia, Joropo & Currulao and bends them and blends them using lots of resources and sounds from jazz and the community vibe of Terraza 7 in Queens, resulting in a truly New York flavored collage. This new project lead by Colombian composer Juan Sebastian Monsalve (known as one of the precursors of the New Colombian Music with his band Curupira) assembles a diverse range of musicians from the New York music scene, achieving a powerful contemporary sound with strong roots in tradition.  

Noel Jewkes, reeds and flute Grant Levin, piano Chris Amberger, bass Josh Setala, drums $20 cash cover charge, byob For reservations, call 415-586-3733 Noel Jewkes is a legend among Bay Area jazz fans for his six-plus decades on the scene as a master of the tenor saxophone and any number of allied instruments, a disciple of the great Lester Young, an expert in swing. Come hear him with a rhythm section comprising long-time associates Grant Levin on piano and Chris Amberger on bass together with the young drummer Josh Setala. Jazz the way we like it!     In Noel’s five decades here on the coast, he’s been called on to work with singers from Rosemary Clooney to Billy Eckstein to Jon Hendricks, in blues-rock bands with Mike Bloomfield and Nick Gravenitis, in the all-female rock band Ace of Cups, in the jump blues outfit led by Lavay Smith and…

Lew Tabackin, flute & tenor saxophone Essiet Okon Essiet, bass Sylvia Cuenca, drums $20 cash cover charge; byob Reservations, call 415-586-3733 In transit between an 8-date/12-day tour in Japan and a booking at the Monterey Jazz Festival, master musician Lew Tabackin stops off at Bird & Beckett in San Francisco for a trio date. From the MJF notes: Lew Tabackin, flutist and tenor saxophonist, is an artist of astonishing vision. His electrifying flute playing is at once virtuosic, primordial, cross-cultural, and passionate. His distinctive tenor sax style includes the use of wide intervals, abrupt changes of mood and tempo, and purposeful fervor, all in the service of showing the full range of possibilities of his instrument — melodically, rhythmically, and dynamically. Without copying or emulating jazz greats of the past, Mr. Tabackin has absorbed elements into his style, ultimately creating his own sound and aura. His interest in music began…

Bob Kenmotsu, tenor saxophone Keith Saunders, piano Eric Markowitz, bass Tony Johnson, drums $20 suggested donation; byob for reservations, call 415-586-3733 Drummer Tony Johnson’s monthly 4th Fridays residency continues! His quartet features musicians with long experience in San Francisco, New York, St. Louis and internationally. Tony arrived in San Francisco from Australia in 1959 and hit the ground swingin’, recording in 1960 with vocalist Bev Kelly, live at the Coffee Gallery on Grant Street in North Beach, engineered by Willy Heider, produced by Orrin Keepnews and released by Riverside Records. He’s never stopped since.  

Walker Brents III presents a talk once a month at Bird & Beckett on a variety of subjects, from poets to philosophers to mystics, folktales to tall tales…   With regard to today’s talk on Friedrich Schiller, he says, “Schiller’s thoughts bring us through a cosmos of art-wisdom that encompasses Kant, the French Revolution, Rousseau and many other places, times, and place-names. Sometimes placeless places of no-name as well. Liquifying our aesthetic inklings and energizing our aesthetic intuitions. This is much more simple and profound than it may seem like at first. Schiller’s concepts are mythical, sublime and humble, all at one moment of whole perception. I offer it to you.” Walker’s talk can be found on our Facebook page or YouTube channel, as well as live in the shop.

  The Tony Johnson Quartet Friday 9/22 at 5:30pm Drummer Tony Johnson swam ashore from Australia in 1959 and hit North Beach swingin’. The singer Bev Kelly led a date at the Coffee Gallery in October 1960 with Pony Poindexter on saxophone, Flip Nunez on piano, Johnny Allen on bass and Tony, himself, on drums, recorded by Wally Heider, produced by Orrin Keepnews and released by Riverside Records as “Bev Kelly, Live at the Coffee Gallery.” Here’s a taste. Tony leads a date at Bird & Beckett on the third Friday of each month, this time out with his quartet featuring Bob Kenmotsu on saxophone, Keith Saunders on piano and Eric Markowitz on bass.           Lew Tabackin Trio Friday 9/22 at 9pmLew Tabackin, the famed NY-based veteran saxophonist/flutist, will be flying in from Tokyo and tuning up here before heading down to play the Monterey Jazz…

Ron Jackson, guitar Essiet Okon Essiet, bass Sylvia Cuenca, drums $20 cover charge at the door; byob reservations: 415-586-3733 New York-based jazz master of the seven-string guitar Ron Jackson returns to Bird & Beckett with Essiet Okon Essiet on bass and Sylvia Cuenca on drums — one stop on a tour that’s taking him from the Rocky Mountain Archtop Festival in Arvada, Colorado to several stops in the Bay Area including Bird & Beckett and up to the Pacific Northwest for shows in Ashland, Salem and Portland. We’re happy to have him back! View this video of his 1/17/23 Bird & Beckett performance with Essiet & Sylvia to remind you how great it was or to clue you in to what he’ll bring this time around! Ron has performed, recorded and taught in over 30 countries, working with such artists as Taj Mahal, Jimmy McGriff, Larry Coryell, Benny Golson, Oliver…

There are plenty of reasons to come down to Bird & Beckett! We sell books and records six days a week, open Tuesday to Sunday from noon to six. And then there are the shows — ten of them in the two weeks between the Joe McKinley Quartet date on the 16th and the weekend of the 22nd to the 24th. You’ll find a double bill of the Tony Johnson Quartet and the Lew Tabackin Trio on Friday (9/22), the Noel Jewkes Quartet Saturday evening (9/23) and a Colombian jazz/folkloric outfit from Queens, Balsa de Fuego, on Sunday (9/24) brought to us by vibes player Dan Neville, and a jam session following… a rich vein of jazz, for sure. A full weekend follows to close out September–peek at our events calendar for a glimpse of those shows! Seating starts about 15 minutes before showtime, and you’ll generally be alright if…

Glen Park writer Beth Winegarner presents her new book on the buried history of San Francisco’s long gone cemeteries… with a little help from “Here Lies a Story”‘s Courtney Minick. San Francisco’s Forgotten Cemeteries: A Buried History, pub date Aug. 28 (call Bird & Beckett to order your copy now!), traces the international city’s settler graveyards — and uncovers how more than 50,000 graves were left behind when the dead moved to Colma.  San Francisco is famous for not having any cemeteries, but the claim isn’t exactly what it seems. In the early 20th Century, the city relocated more than 150,000 graves to the nearby town of Colma to make way for a rapidly growing population. But an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 burials were quietly built over and forgotten, only to resurface every time a new building project began.  The dead still lie beneath some of the city’s most cherished…

Joel Eis at the podium addressing a student protest at CSU Fresno, 1970. Author Joel Eis, hosted and introduced by poet, bandleader, musicologist and KPFA/KPOO dj Avotcja, presents his memoir, Standin’ in a Hard Rain: The Making of a Revolutionary Life. Thursday 9/14 at 7pm Joel Eis has a bookshop with a radical bent in San Rafael called Rebound, writes science fiction, and has had a long career in theater production and education, with an overriding commitment to political theater and activism. His memoir “is a useful and compelling read as the nation once again tries to find its bearings.” –David Harris, journalist and activist. Threeocracy plays the music of the Lucky Thompson / Oscar Pettiford collaborations of 1956. Friday 9/14 at 5:30pm – $20 suggested / byob Bassist Oscar Pettiford’s tune Tricotism is the centerpiece of two 1956 recording dates with saxophonist Lucky Thompson. Pettiford (1922-1960) was a key bassist…

Mario Guarneri is assembling a great jazz band from the membership rolls of the Independent Musicians Alliance to entertain you tonight, with a jam session open to all IMA members to follow. IMA members attend free of charge. The public is welcome–it’s a fundraiser for the IMA, so bring your checkbook or the equivalent! Pay a $20 cover charge to help Bird & Beckett pay a fair guaranteed wage to the band members. And make a donation if you’re able to one or all of the organizations that are working locally to assist the musicians in their struggle — the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project, the Independent Musicians Alliance and Jazz in the Neighborhood. Together, we can do this. BYOB if it sounds like thirsty work to you! The IMA is a solidarity organization co-founded in 2022 by Mario Guarneri and Eric Whittington — now 180 musicians strong —…

Kim Shuck, San Francisco’s 7th Poet Laureate (2017-2020), hosts two readings on zoom each month, with featured readers and an open mic on the second Monday of each month and an all-open mic format on the fourth Monday of the month. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84350265713?pwd=eE84V3BYdWxiSFBHNHhmdUt1WTUzdz09 Meeting ID: 843 5026 5713 Passcode: 244211 September 11, Kimi Sugioka and Lia Le-Nguyen are featured. Kimi Sugioka is a mother, educator, songwriter and poet. She earned an MFA from Naropa University and has published two books of poetry; the newest of which is Wile & Wing on Manic D Press. She has been published in numerous anthologies and is the poet laureate of Alameda, California. As an active board member for literary arts organizations, she curates and hosts readings in Alameda and San Francisco. She believes that creating community through art is a revolutionary act. Lia Le-Nguyen (she/they) is a writer based in Fremont, California. This year, Lia was…

Join Joe & the boys for a couple of hours reveling in the pain of heartache and demon alcohol, and a tribute or two to the valor of the American trucker! Sure they can close down the honky tonks, but they’ll never close down the bookshop! BYOB and a twenty for the band!  

Jazz and poetic compositions by saxophonist/poet Lewis Jordan, an international touring and recording artist, poet, actor and playwright, whose teachers are the music and poetry of Ayler, Shepp, Coleman, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago; the thoughts and spirit of Krishnamurti and Rumi. Music at Large includes Lewis Jordan’s long-time collaborators Sandi Poindexter, Ollen Erich Hunt and Jimmy Biala, who will appear on tonight’s program, and expands as circumstances allow to include such artists as Bruce Ackley, Pearl Ubungen, Tureeda Mikel, John-Carlos Perea, Karl Evangelista, Genny Lim, David Boyce, Ian Carey, Marshall Trammell, Masaru Koga, India Cook, and many others since its inception. https://www.musicatlarge.org/music-at-large The ensemble’s performance September 27, 2021 at Freight and Salvage in Berkeley can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjMUFMF1Uk0. Lewis should be king! video production by Jeremy Allen | Musiquito Media https://www.musiquito.com/ Recordings by Lewis Jordan and Music at Large include This is Where I Came In (2017),…

Always a good time when the In Crowd gathers at Bird & Beckett. Eric Shifrin, piano Paul Smith, bass Raul Ramirez, drums $20 suggested, BYOB Can’t make it to the show? Check it out in the live stream on our YouTube channel or Facebook page. Donate to support the musicians & the stream!

Two scrappy poets with long histories in San Francisco bohemia make their way out to Bird & Beckett to make some noise in sleepy Glen Park! Jessica Loos’s work verges on performance art, channeling a strain of poetic tradition steeped in surrealism, dada and the best of Charles Bukowski. She’s a member of The Living Theatre and a collage artist as well, and organizes the poetry for the North Beach First Friday Artwalk and the North Beach Festival. Never satisfied, she also puts on readings, often with live music, at Specs Bar in Adler Alley opposite City Lights, and in Kerouac Alley between City Lights and Vesuvio opposite Specs–not to mention on Upper Grant Street on the sidewalk in front of Macchiarini Creative Design. Cara Vida left a life among the suits long ago to find a dizzying and earthy reality. With a carney’s purity, she utilizes a collage technique…

Liam Furey, tenor saxophone Anne Sajdera, piano Aaron Germain, bass Brian Andres, drums $20 suggested / byob reservations: 415-586-3733 Born and raised in Bird and Beckett’s own backyard in Glen Park, Liam Furey leads a top-flight rhythm section through two rewarding sets of reflective originals and unique standards. Liam has been involved in SF’s jazz scene for years, notably composing and recording the soundtrack for “Red Poet”, the documentary centering around the life of the late SF Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman. Visit Liam’s website at liamfurey.com for a taste of his rich tenor tone. His quartet for the date includes Anne Sajdera, a consummate jazz pianist with deep Brazilian and classical roots; bassist Aaron Germain, whose collaborations with musicians from a global range of traditions are widely acclaimed; and drummer Brian Andres, a key player on the Bay Area latin jazz scene.  

The Anhad Naad Collective this evening comprises vocalist Divya Vyas, Jun Ishimuro on flute and Charles Thomas on bass, joined by guest singer Madhuranjan Mohaan. $20-25 cover charge, sliding scale Anhad Naad Collective performance at Bird & Beckett can be viewed live and also after the fact on our bookshop’s Facebook page or YouTube channel. Please donate $5 or more using the venmo or paypal information on the screen to help us pay the performers and help with the streaming expense. Anhad Naad derives from the Sanskrit “Anahata Nad,” meaning “sound produced without touching two parts” and meaning at the same time “pure” or “clean, stainless”. The name of this chakra signifies the state of freshness that appears when we are able to become detached and to look at the different and apparently contradictory experiences of life with a state of openness (expansion). Flute player Jun Ishimuro came up with…

Master storyteller, able interlocutor of literary ancestors, Walker Brents III delves into Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s fairy tale, groping in its lessons to get inside what it teaches, exploring the formative affinity he senses in it to the way consciousness actually goes along, seeking once again the place to which he’s always returned. Corollary themes of this endeavor, says Walker, include anthroposophy, Schiller’s insights into the education of the aesthetic sense, and the French Revolution, and some flashes of the Illuminati as well, prior to their being stirred so deeply into the collective cultural soup. Walker’s talks, monthly but for June and July when he travels the west once again, have been delivered only in our live stream since the beginning of the “special period” we have endured so long. Now, we can host a small audience in the shop. Call for a reservation: 415-586-3733. Or just grab a friend…

San Francisco Poet Laureate Emerita Kim Shuck conducts a poetry reading on Zoom twice a month. Second Mondays include two featured readers and an open mic. On the fourth Monday of each month, the format is all open mic.  Zoom in and add your voice! Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84350265713?pwd=eE84V3BYdWxiSFBHNHhmdUt1WTUzdz09 Meeting ID: 843 5026 5713 Passcode: 244211

All welcome! Musicians, be our guests. Audience, help us pay the trio! Bring a twenty if you’re able, and consider donating to the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project, the 501(c)3 we use to fund our music, poetry and other cultural programming. That’s what makes it work when audiences can’t carry the burden of paying the talent. We’ve got a lot of talent in San Francisco, spanning the generations.

From the high deserts of western Colorado comes Danny Rosen, a poet, publisher, and bookseller after our own heart, whose Lithic Press has published a wealth of fine poetry, prose and art books in recent years, and whose bookstore and gallery of the same name in Fruita, CO has been the site of many great readings and exhibitions. Joining him on the Bird & Beckett stage will be the inimitable wordsmith and drummer Clark Coolidge, and writer and City Lights editor Garrett Caples, as well as poet, biographer, and emcee for the day, Neeli Cherkovski. More about the poets: Each morning Danny Rosen pees on the bank of the largest unnamed tributary to the East Branch of Big Salt Wash which flows into the Colorado River several miles below Fruita, Colorado. Early on he learned to swing a hammer and that changed everything. He has been a poet, publisher, teacher,…

Dave Tidball, alto sax. Charlie Keagle, tenor sax. Henry Hung, trumpet. Peter Barshay, bass. David Rokeach, drums. $25 cover charge / byob. reservations: call the shop at 415-586-3733. Tidball5 plays three-horn arrangements of alto player Dave Tidball’s compositions that he’s arranged for an ensemble with no chord-playing instrument (such as piano or guitar). Soloists are accompanied and supported by textures and lines of the non-soloing horns, along with the rhythm section. More from Dave: “I had a seven-piece band in Boston which was fun – I enjoy writing for multiple horns. In the 90s I formed Threedom, a trio which included bassist Bill Douglass and drummer Robert Kaufman, reveling in the freedom of that format. This new group is like an amalgamation of those two worlds” Dave, a multi-reed instrumentalist, arranger and composer born in Wales, became active in the London jazz scene in the 1970s, recording two albums and…

three avatars of the san francisco cultural stew invite you to come browse the stacks and buy some books. it’s the only way we’re going to dig out of this mess, and the plumping of the cash drawer is their intent in gathering you here today. we ourselves will content ourselves with ringing up the sales, humming along quietly, nodding sagely at the wisdom of their observations. know thyself, they say, but we say we’ll leave that to them what’s got a better perspective. we’ll take the sally field position on the matter. we’re just happy to be an outpost on the city’s cocktail circuit, where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life, to get the feel of life… the fray can wait.

Come out for the funkified soul of Jairo Vargas, Eli Goldlink, Bil Hagar and Pat Korte Rojai in the Pocket! $20 cover / byob  

It all started back at the turn of the century… we fell into conversation with the bassist John Clark, flipping through the jazz record bins, and the next thing we knew, we’d agreed on presenting a trio on a Friday evening a few weeks hence. John arrived with veteran drummer Vince Lateano and the pianist Lee Bloom, who brought along an electric keyboard… A few weeks later, one of Lee’s piano students, Jon Anderson, assembled a trio with his buddy Andrew Kelsey, George & Evelyn’s kid from up on Miguel Street… Not long after that, Eric Shifrin set up his keyboard with a trio. The neighbors clamored for more, especially Blanche Bebb’s friend Mary Goode… The proprietor told ’em, we gotta pay the musicians,  you know…  and that got serious when a retired tenor sax player from up on Martha Street, Chuck Peterson, heard from Mary that Bird & Beckett…

RDL+ celebrates the release of their five-album CD set “Bay Area Bridges” with an intimate concert at Bird & Beckett. Ruthie Dineen (piano) Doug Lee (bass) Luis Salcedo (guitar) $20 cover charge (cash, please); byob To reserve a seat, call 415-586-3733 RDL+, conceived and developed its “Bay Area Bridges” series in a 4-year residency at Studio Grand in Oakland as an evolving encounter with guests artists focused on original composition and collaboration, spanning jazz, classical and many other influences, moving from solo to trio and up to large ensemble based on the individual and collective artistic inspiration of the musicians. Tonight, they perform with special guests to celebrate that project and the resultant, newly released five-CD set. “We are interested in being creative and full musicians, both on on our own and as a group. When we come together, it feels right; seamless, exhilarating and meaningful all at once.” Beginning…

Patrick Cahill (The Machinery of Sleep), Gerald Fleming (The Choreographer), Carolyn Miller (Light, Moving), Eliot Schain (The Distant Sound) read poems from their Sixteen Rivers Press titles and new work.