Clarinet Thing
Friday 27 October 2017 @ 8:00pm
The Berkeley Hillside Club 2286 Cedar Street, Berkeley, CA 94709 Info: 510-845-1350 Email: concerts@hillsideclub.org Admission: $20 general, $15 students & seniors, $10 Club members
The Berkeley Hillside Club is delighted to host the return of Clarinet Thing featuring Beth Custer, Sheldon Brown, Ben Goldberg, and Harvey Wainapel.Together they play their own unique brand of jazz and new music, originals and arrangements of unusual works. Don't miss these remarkable artists performing in our historic and acoustically-excellent hall.
Clarinet Thing are:
Beth Custer - A, Bb, alto, bass clarinets Sheldon Brown - Eb, Bb, bass clarinets Ben Goldberg - Bb, contralto clarinets Harvey Wainapel - Bb, alto, bass clarinets
About the Concert:
If you missed Clarinet Thing's sold out all Duke Ellington show at Musically Minded Academy, this will be a chance to hear some of the new repertoire. Founded by Beth Custer in 1989, Clarinet Thing has amassed a large repertoire in it’s twenty-six years of performing including tunes by Herbie Nichols,Carla Bley, Jimmy Giuffre, Thelonious Monk, Eubie Blake, Abdullah Ibrahim, Alexandre Stellio, John Carter, and original compositions by band members.
The Artists: Composer and multi-instrumentalist Sheldon Brown has been involved in the Bay Area creative music scene for over 20 years. Since 1994 he has led his own band, Sheldon Brown Group, which performs his own compositions, and in 2010 formed Sheldon Brown Quintet, which performs the music of Herbie Nichols. He also leads Distant Intervals, a band that performs original compositions based on Brown's transcriptions of speech melodies of modern poets, such as Andrew Joron, Clark Coolidge and Ivan Arguelles. Distant Intervals just received a grant from San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music to perform a new composition by Brown based on the poetry and poetic speech melodies of noted Bay Area Surrealist poet, Philip Lamantia. Brown has performed internationally as a featured soloist with Cuban pianist Omar Sosa, and recorded on 5 of Sosa's albums. While with Sosa he performed at The North Sea Jazz Festival in den Haag, New Morning in Paris, Tribute to the Love Generation in Tokyo and many others. Brown is a prolific composer who has written music for his own group and many other groups he performs with. For Club Foot Orchestra he composed music for the silent films, Metropolis, Pandora's Box, The Hands of Orlac and Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. He also wrote music for Club Foot's scores for the cartoon series The Twisted tales of Felix the Cat, which aired on CBS. Beth Custer is an original member of the ensembles Club Foot Orchestra (CFO), purveyors of live, original, collaboratively created scores for classic silent films; of the trance-dance band Trance Mission with didgeridu master Stephen Kent, of the trip-hop duo Eighty Mile Beach with DJ Christian Jones, of the improvising monsters Dream On: Frith/Custer/Fajt; and the founder of the quartet of esteemed jazz clarinetists Clarinet Thing and of The Beth Custer Ensemble. Beth has appeared on numerous recordings and produced 15 on her own label, BC Records and toured extensively at an international level both solo and with her ensembles. Recent commissions include: What If, Would You for AXIS Dance Company's 25th Anniversary season, (Oakland, 2013), Peter for 200 teens with ROCO Dance (Marin, 2013), Prokofiev for BCE premiered at Davies Symphony Hall's After Hours Series (SF, 2012), a score for the documentary film Strong! (Julie Wyman, dir., Roxie Theatre, SF 2012), Youth, Fully for Left Coast Chamber Ensemble's (LCCE) woodwind sextet (War Memorial Green Room, SF, 2011), Bear in Shamanic Transformation for Intersection for the Arts Jazz Series with Will Bernard (DeYoung Museum, 2010), Private Life of a Cat, At Prague Castle, Aimless Walk live silent film scores for SF Cinematheque (Alexander Hammid, dir., SF MOMA, 2010); Buckminsterfullerene for Clarinet Thing (Capp Street Community Music Center, SF, 2010). Ben Goldberg, whose group New Klezmer Trio "kicked open the door for radical experiments with Ashkenazi roots music" (San Francisco Chronicle), lives in Berkeley. He recently released two records on his BAG Production label: Subatomic Particle Homesick Blues ("Traces the evolution of an artist whO now seems to find beautiful melodies at the end of every path." - Andrew Gilbert, NPR), and Unfold Ordinary Mind ("A feeling of joyous research into the basics of polyphony and collective improvising." - Ben Ratliff, New York Times). The Downbeat Critics' Poll has named Ben the #1 Rising Star Clarinetist, with Peter Margasak commenting that "Ben Goldberg has few rivals as one of the most vibrant, flexible, and inventive clarinetists in jazz and improvised music." In addition to Clarinet Thing and Unfold Ordinary Mind, Ben's projects include DIALOGUE, a duo with pianist Myra Melford; and the Ben Goldberg Trio, with Greg Cohen and Kenny Wollesen. This fall Ben will record his large project Orphic Machine, funded by a recent Shifting Foundation grant. Saxophonist/clarinetist Harvey Wainapel (pronounced "wine-apple") has performed with the likes of McCoy Tyner, Joe Lovano, Ray Charles, Dave Brubeck, and Joe Henderson. Besides working with these and numerous other leaders, Wainapel has toured extensively under his own name, and has performed in 22 countries. His heavy involvement with the music of Brazil has led to performances with top-level musicians such as Airto Moreira, Flora Purim, Dori Caymmi, Guinga, and Jovino Santos Neto. Saxophone master Joe Lovano says, "Wainapel plays with the performance attitude which for me is what jazz and improvisation is all about. It's a pleasure to listen to Harvey's soulful interpretations." A favorite of critics, musicians and fans, Wainapel was nominated for two BAMMY (Bay Area Music) Awards: Outstanding Reed Player and Outstanding Jazz Musician. (The short list of fellow nominees included Joe Henderson, Peter Apfelbaum and Charlie Hunter.) The 2009 Downbeat Critic's Poll lists Harvey as a "rising star" on clarinet.