Beth Custer

Primarily recognized for her work on clarinet, Beth Custer also composes, performs, and teaches while creating scores for television, film, stage productions, and dance works. A longtime San Francisco resident, she began her professional path by performing in various ensembles before establishing a solo identity toward the close of the 1990s. Early in that decade she became a member of the experimental, multi-piece Club Foot Orchestra, a group already several years into its run, and contributed to its recordings, among them the 1991 release Metropolis along with the 1995 albums Sherlock Jr. & Felix and Wild Beasts, Kidnapped, and More. While active with that ensemble she simultaneously participated in the improvisational Trance Mission, which she co-founded in 1992 alongside didgeridoo player Stephen Kent; on those projects Custer handled clarinet, trumpet, and occasional vocals alongside Eda Maxyam on vocals and Peter Valsamis on drums, percussion, and electronics. The City of Tribes label issued the band’s 1990s catalog, including the 1994 albums Meanwhile and Trance Mission, the 1996 set Headlight, and the 1999 title A Day Out of Time. Custer next formed the duo Eighty Mile Beach with producer Christian Jones, who supplied beats, guitar, and bass while she played clarinet and keyboards and contributed vocals; together they released two 12-inch singles and the 1998 full-length Inclement Weather. By the mid-1990s she had begun issuing material under her own name, beginning with the 1996 debut The Shirt I Slept In, followed by 1999’s In the Broken Fields Where I Lie and the pair of 2000 releases Vinculum Symphony Live and Dona Luz 30 Besos.