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  • AMERARCANA 2012: A Bird & Beckett Review - $15.00
    The Third Annual, featuring the words of Bill Berkson, Justin Desmangles, Joanne Kyger, Rodrigo Lira (translated by Rodrigo Olavarría & Thomas Rothe), Duncan McNaughton, Jackson Meazle, David Meltzer, Sarah Menefee, Jason Morris, Jeffrey Joe Nelson, Erik Noonan, Cedar Sigo, Will Skinker, Tisa Walden & the editor Nicholas James Whittington, with artwo […]
  • The Cuban Drumbeat, by Piero Gleijesis - $15.00
    In waging a long war against oppression and misery in the third world, Castro's Cuba sent more troops into battle on foreign soil in defense of besieged populations than all but the U.S., Russia and a few Western European countries. Gleijeses wonders what's next for a post-Castro Cuba. […]
  • Two Underdogs and a Cat, by Slavenka Drakulic - $17.00
    Drakulic, well known to readers of The Nation, the New York Times and the New York Review of Books, ponders the fate of the communist idea through three stories: "An Interview with The Oldest Dog in Bucharest," "A Guided Tour of the Museum of Communism" and "A Cat Keeper in Warsaw" […]

  1. Paris Portraits + Manning/Pilorz Outfit

    August 14, 2011 by Eric

    Paris & Points Further Out!

    Sunday, August 14:
    Paris Portraits at 2:30 / Outfest! at 4:30

    Gertrude Stein’s Circle evoked in a monologue based on Harriet Lane Levy’s Paris Portraits

    Manning / Pilorz combo featured in our Outfest! sequence of “free jazz” concerts

    Get your hiking on Mt. Tam done early, and let Stern Grove slide this week, ’cause we’ve got a couple things you shouldn’t miss…

    All the town’s agog about the Stein Collection exhibit at SFMOMA, the Picasso exhibit at the De Young, the Stein exhibit at the Jewish Museum… and along comes Harriet Lane Levy, who traveled with Alice B. Toklas to Paris in 1907 to join the little crowd of California ex-pats revolving around the salons of Gertrude, Leo & Michael  Stein.  By her own account, Gertrude soon set to the task of trying to get Harriet to go home, and leave Alice with her!  In any case, Harriet, whose memoir 920 O’Farrell Street has long been an important piece of writing about early San Francisco, set to writing about Gertrude and her “circle” once she got home, resulting in the piece recently published by Heyday called Paris Portraits.  Harriet’s account is brought to life at Bird  & Beckett in a one-woman show by Laura Shepard, Events Director of the Mechanics Institute Library, staged with the consummate help of Kathleen Blake.

    Then, at 4:30 we head out from Paris, not to the banlieues on the outskirts of town, but way further out, with L.A. rocket scientist/tenor sax titan Chuck Manning and SETI astrophysicist/Glen Park resident/trombonist Stu Pilorz, joined by bassist Ollie Dudeck and drummer Omar Aran.  They’ll be way inside the jazz canon for good stretches, but hold on to your hat when they reach for the “out” side of the music.

    We’re calling this combo the Chuck Manning/Stu Pilorz Outfit…  It’s all part of Outfest!, our ongoing 5-week sequence of “free jazz” concerts happening every Sunday from the end of July through to the end of April.

    Two more Outfest! shows in August after this one: Bishu Chatterjee’s “Time is Now, Not Money” and Rent Romus’ “Lords of Outland”– to be followed by a soft landing, and an exquisite one, with Anthony Brown’s Asian-American Jazz Trio on the first Sunday of September…

    Category: B&B Events, Literary events, Music events, which way west? Sunday concertsTags: , , , , | Comments (0)

  2. Sunday Double-Header

    June 23, 2011 by Eric

    Sunday, June 26 – events at 2:00 and 4:30/5:30

    Sunday Double Header

    2:00 pm – The Poems of Richard Hugo
    A Staged Reading by PUS Theatre Company

    Richard Hugo was the poet of the barroom, the open road, and the river, his work laced through with mystery, sadness and regret.

    Hugo (1923-1982) gave us several very fine books of poems (“The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir”, etc.) and memoir (“The Real West Marginal Way”) and taught a generation of writers at the University of Montana.

    PUS is the theatre company known as Performers Under Stress, expert interpreters of the work of Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, and creators of striking original works… in an upcoming production, they will present a one-man meditation on Hugo’s work by Turk Muller.  This afternoon, Turk will try out some of that material on you, the suspecting audience… it will be a gratifying encounter with theatre in the making, and a crucial American poet…

    4:30/5:30 pm (2 sets)
    The Jim Grantham Quartet
    a which way west? concert

    Jim is a towering tenor sax player, often heard at Bird & Beckett in other ensembles and now bringing in his own group to give you an entirely new take on his sound and his conception of the music.  With Spencer Allen on piano; Jeff Neighbor on bass; and Greg German on drums.

    He’s taught generations of jazz players, wrote the book on jazz improvisation, and fields a range of combos under the “Nightbird” moniker.  One of the secret gems of the Bay Area jazz scene.

    Category: B&B Events, Literary events, Music events, Theatrical events, which way west? Sunday concertsTags: , , , , , | Comments (0)