Clarinet Thing
Founded and led by Beth Custer since 1990, Clarinet Thing is a quartet of
four of the Bay Area's most virtuosic clarinetists. Clarinet Thing performs
arrangements of Duke Ellington, Eubie Blake, John Carter, Bobby Bradford,
Pixinguinha, Kurt Weill, Ignacy Podgorski and others as well as original compositions.
The full range of the clarinet family is represented, giving the group a rich sonic palette.
Fifteen years of live recordings in Bay Area cafes, bars, churches, and
concert halls were gleaned for their 2005 CD release "Agony Pipes and Misery
Sticks", two slang terms for the clarinet. 2009 saw the group's latest release "Cry, Want",
featuring compositions of Jimmy Giuffre and Carla Bley.
Beth Custer is a San Francisco based composer, performer, bandleader, clarinet teacher, and the proprietress of BC Records.
She is a founding member of the notorious silent film soundtrack purveyors the "Club Foot Orchestra",
4th world ambient ensemble "Trance Mission", the trip-hop duo "Eighty Mile Beach", the Latin-jazz-rock influenced "Doña Luz 30 Besos", and
the Beth Custer Ensemble.
Beth has been composer for the cutting edge dance-theater troupe the Joe Goode Performance Group for over 10 years, having composed for seven of their productions.
Recent soundtrack work includes a season of the cartoon "The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat" for CBS/Film Roman, "Independent View" theme for KQED television,
as well as many indie films, most notably those of Cathy Crane, Craig Baldwin, Esther Paik, Will Zavala, and Kwon & Iger.
Theater compositions include productions by California Shakespeare Company, Campo Santos, Magic Theater, and Berkeley and San Diego Repertory Theaters.
As a free-lance clarinetist, Beth has performed with Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Connie Champagne, Jin Hi Kim, Miya Masaoka, Will Bernard,
Grassy Knoll, Violent Femmes, Joshua Brody, Sky Cries Mary, Snakefinger and many others.
bethcuster.com
Clarinetist Ben Goldberg grew up in Denver, Colorado. He received his undergraduate music degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz and a
Master of Arts in Composition from Mills College. He was a pupil of the eminent clarinetist Rosario Mazzeo, and studied with Steve Lacy and Joe Lovano.
Ben’s group "New Klezmer Trio" took a slightly different view of Jewish music. Their CDs, "Masks and Faces", "Melt Zonk Rewire, and "Short for Something", are on the Tzadik label.
Ben's other recordings include two records by Junk Genius (with John Schott, Trevor Dunn, and Kenny Wollesen), "Here by Now" (Music and Arts),
"What Comes Before" (Tzadik), "Eight Phrases for Jefferson Rubin" (Victo), "Twelve Minor" (Avant), and "Light at the Crossroads",
co-led with Marty Ehrlich (Songlines). He recently released "the door, the hat, the chair, the fact", dedicated to Steve Lacy, and featuring
Devin Hoff, Carla Kihlstedt, Ches Smith and Rob Sudduth.
Ben currently performs with the group "Tin Hat".
He has worked with Andrew Hill, Bobby Bradford, John Zorn, Cecil Taylor, Roswell Rudd, Myra Melford and Nels Cline, among many others.
Ben appeared here previously with "Clarinet Thing", "Plays Monk", and Myra Melford.
Clarinetist, composer and woodwind multi-instrumentalist Sheldon Brown formed the Sheldon Brown Group in 1993,
and in 1996 he released the jazz/fusion CD "Shifting Currents". Brown tours internationally (most recently with pianist Omar Sosa)
to world-renowned venues such as the North Sea Jazz Festival, Moers Jazz Festival, Vancouver Jazz Festival, Jazz d'Or, Toronto Jazz Festival
and the Spoleto Festival. He is featured on Omar Sosa's CDs "Prietos", "Bembon", "Spirit of the Roots" and "Free Roots" and on
Ian Dogole's CDs "Ionospheres" and "Night Harvest".
Brown is a member of San Francisco's Club Foot Orchestra, for whom he has composed scores for
Film Roman's cartoon series "The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat" and silent films such as Fritz Lang's "Metropolis", Buster Keaton's
"Sherlock Jr." and "Cops",
G. W. Pabst's "Pandora's Box" and Robert Wiene's "Hands of Orlac". Club Foot has performed at New York's Knitting Factory, Walter Reade Theater,
at Lincoln Center and the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C. Brown performed in Anthony Braxton's "Composition No. 132" at Grace Cathedral
as part of the 1986 San Francisco Jazz Festival. He also performs regularly with the Realistic Orchestra.
He currently teaches composition at the Jazzschool in Berkeley, California.
Sheldon appeared at Chez Hanny previously with "Hemispheres",
the Ratzo Harris Trio, the Michael Wilcox Trio, "Mandala", and the Sheldon Brown Group.
The 1998 All Music Guide to Jazz calls clarinetist and saxophonist Harvey Wainapel
”one of the most promising and versatile players of his generation”.
Wainapel’s heavy involvement with the music of Brazil has led to performances
with masters of the genre such as Airto Moreira, Flora Purim, and Dori Caymmi.
He has also performed with jazz greats McCoy Tyner, Joe Lovano, Ray Charles, and Joe Henderson,
and he has toured more than 20 countries as a bandleader.
He has released 3 CDs accompanied by musicians such as Kenny Barron, Larry Grenadier, Kenny Wollesen
and the Metropole Orchestra.
Harvey has appeared at Chez Hanny with the Lorca Hart Trio and the Harvey Wainapel / Phil Grenadier Group.
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