Photo of Beth Custer

Beth Custer

Beth Custer Radio

General Info

  • Genre: Acoustic / Experimental / Other

    Location San Francisco, US

    Profile Views: 30269

    Last Login: 1/9/2013

    Member Since 12/27/2006

    Website www.bethcuster.com

    Record Label BC Records

    Type of Label Indie

  • Bio

    Beth Custer is a San Francisco based composer, performer, bandleader, and the proprietor of BC Records. She has collaborated with a myriad of artists from around the world. Beth is an original member of the Club Foot Orchestra, the first band in the US to score and perform with silent era films since 1986. She is a founding member of the 4th world ensemble Trance Mission, the trip-hop duo Eighty Mile Beach, and leads the quartet of esteemed jazz clarinetists Clarinet Thing and The Beth Custer Ensemble. Beth has released over twenty-five recordings. She tours internationally including a recent trip to Russia, Czech Republic, Ireland, and England to perform her My Grandmother silent film score supported by Trust for Mutual Understanding and Mid Atlantic Arts Fund awards. Beth composes for theatre, film, dance, television, installations and the concert stage. The Pacific Film Archive commissioned Beth to compose a live score for My Grandmother, a rare Soviet film. She then went on to receive the Aaron Copland Recording Fund to record and release the work on DVD. With Club Foot Orchestra, Beth has scored scenes from the CBS/Film Roman cartoon The Twisted Tales of Felix The Cat, and the silent films Pandora’s Box, Sherlock Jr., and Metropolis. Other films include those Melinda Stone, Cathy Lee Crane, Koohan Paik (1st place, Berlin Film Festival 1994), Peter MacCandless (Sundance 1991), George Spies, Betsy Bayha, Karina Epperlein, and Will Zavala. She is currently working on a the documentary 'Strong!' with director Julie Wyman. Theatre productions include four musicals with writer/director Octavio Solis with Campo Santo Theatre Company of San Francisco, Cornerstone Theatre and Overtone Industries of Los Angeles. Beth has also scored productions for San Diego Repertory Theatre, California Shakespeare Company, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Magic Theatre, Bay Area Playwrights Festival and A Traveling Jewish Theatre with directors Penny Metropolis, Jonathon Moscone, Anne Galjour, Karin Coonan, Tod Salovey, Joan Shirle, and Delia MacDougal. For the concert stage, Beth created Vinculum Symphony under a Phyllis Wattis Residency at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Vinculum brought together a chamber orchestra with experimental instrument builders. Left Coast Chamber Ensemble has commissioned three chamber works as have Zeitgeist Ensemble of Minneapolis, writer Bernie Weiner, SPaNK ensemble of Wyoming, San Francisco City Winds, Kronos Quartet, and Turtle Island String Quartet. She’s created a suite of pieces entitled Buckminsterfullerene centered on the inventions of Buckminster Fuller under a Zellerbach Family Fund and an SF Friends of Chamber Music awards. Beth has composed for seven productions of the dance/theatre troupe the Joe Goode Performance Group. Her score for JGPG’s The Maverick Strain, won an Isadora Duncan Award and a run at the Joyce Theater in NYC. She has also composed for Flyaway Productions, Roco Dance Company, Knee Jerk, and for butoh dancers Koichi Tamano and Ledoh. Beth has performed and recorded with a diverse array of artists including MacArthur Fellow inventor Trimpin; artists Vladimir Kokolia and Billie Grace Lynn; musicians Fred Frith, Miya Masaoka, Joan Jenrenaud, Amy Denio, Tin Hat, Tango No. 9, Pamela Z, Will Bernard, Sex Mob, John Schott, Grassy Knoll, ROVA, Violent Femmes, J.A. Deane, Snakefinger, Greg Goodman, William Cepeda, Elaine Buckholtz, Mark Eitzel, Penelope Houston, Anna Homler, Ollin, and Connie Champagne. Beth was the first Bay Area artist to receive a second artist’s residency at the Marin Headlands Center for the Arts. Other residencies include Montalvo Arts Center, University of Wyoming, and Civitella Ranieri in a castle in Italy. She received the prestigious Meet The Composer New Residency and Commissioning grants, a McKnight Fellowship, two San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist grants, two Zellerbach Family Fund awards, a Gerbode award, an Argosy Foundation recording grant, and three American Composer’s Forum grants. Beth is an Adjunct Professor of Composition at Mills College and holds a Masters Degree in Clarinet Performance from San Francisco State University and a Bachelors Degree in Musical Studies from the Crane School of Music at the State University of New York in Potsdam.

  • Members

    Jan Jackson, David James, Chris Grady, Diana Mangano, Lisa Mezzacappa, Ben Goldberg, Sheldon Brown, Harvey Wainapel.

  • Influences

  • Sounds Like

    A Clip from the film, My Grandmother, soundtrack composed and performed by Beth Custer and friends. .. .. .. .. ....

Stream

  1. Beth Custer

    Got some new songs released http://t.co/4n2nhLhq2J

  2. Beth Custer

    Check out my new song on Soundcloud https://t.co/iG99KTG1m4

  3. Beth Custer

    http://t.co/hDi3GtWu2J Custer's May Gazette

  4. Beth Custer

    I just backed Brophy's 2013 Spoilers Grubstake Literary Subscription on @Kickstarter http://t.co/Rgbst1MHQK

  5. Beth Custer

    uploaded a new video:

Comments

Post a comment...
  • Tom Schulte Outsight Ra…

    Thanks for the interview, Beth !
    http://www.myspace.com/outsightradiohours/blog/546657711

    4 months ago
  • Robley Evans

    Cheers Beth! 

    Photobucket
    Have a sweet weekend!
    ASAP! ~ Robley;D Photobucket

    2 years ago
  • Valentina Lemont

    Did you know???
    You can get 1000's of INCOMING Friends and so much more! =)
    Check out Capacity Productions!




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    check out Capacity Productions for real, you'll thank me later!!


    They also hook up custom graphic websites with Free hosting and Free updates!

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    2 years ago
  • Mixed Emotions (studio …

    Thanks for adding my E-mixing page!! I Hope we get a chance to work together in the future!

    Kenny

    2 years ago
  • Tyranny of the Minority

    ..

    I am proud to be part of the campaign to put the California Democracy Act on the ballot. This measure needs to collect thousands of signatures by April 5th, and several California musicians are helping this campaign by providing free downloads of our music from now until the signature gathering deadline. If you go to www.myspace.com/tyrannyminority you will find a link to a page that includes lots of very cool music in a variety of styles.  The featured musicians include world fusion pioneers Ancient Future, Paraguayan Harpist Carlos Reyes and his Electric Symphony, an historic collaboration between Raga Maestro Ali Akbar Khan and Bollywood superstar Ashe Bhosle, Funky Rhythm and Blues by Rude Notes Galore, Didjeridu master Stephen Kent with his groups Baraka Moon and Australian Bebop Ragas, and many others. There’s literally something here for everybody, and you’ll never get a better chance to discover some new and exciting music.

     

                These Musicians donated their music because they want to encourage you to go the website that explains why this is so important.  This site also provides downloadable petitions that can be printed out and mailed directly to the campaign office, and forwarded as an email attachment to other California voters. We think that once you learn how the 2/3 rule has been destroying California’s Infrastructure, you’ll want to help support this straightforward measure consisting of fourteen words “All legislative actions on revenue and budget must be determined by a majority vote.”

    3 years ago
  • System Zion

    Greetings and blessings

    Check out the video and download 
    America's #1 free the weed tune
     'LEGALIZE WEED' 
    Photobucket

    3 years ago
  • Dave Parkinson

    Thanks for adding me to your friends...
    Check out my recently updated page !

    Visit Dave Parkinson's My Space Music


    3 years ago
  • Feed Me! (facebook.com/…

    Hi there,
    Thanks for the add. We are a Post Rock/Electronica band from Cairo, Egypt. Our debut album "Marching Stickmen" is now available FOR FREE on our page. Check us out and feel free to download our album ;)

    Cheers from Cairo, Egypt
    Feed Me!

    3 years ago
  • florent plataroti

    Hello Beth

    Very very nice Works! i love your Grandmother tunes!!
    Thank you very much

    3 years ago
  • Earthwise Productions

    who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa, if you know what I mean!!!!!!!

    3 years ago
10 of 59More

Bio:

full calendar

myspaceGcal v.1.0

Clarinet Thing Update! My clarinet quartet Clarinet Thing (Ben Goldberg, Sheldon Brown, Harvey Wainapel, and myself) just recorded a brand new CD. There's a glimpse of a few unmixed tracks here. Jeff Cressman recorded us in just two days at my house using our nice large wooden room. We included four arrangements that Sheldon Brown created off of Jimmy Giuffre's Fusion record from 1961 including the intimate tune by Carla Bley In The Mornings Out There and Giuffre's Cry, Want. We'll be mixing in early February and hope to be touring the universe from then on out! This is such a hot group if I don't say so myself! CHECK OUT THE REVIEW IN THE NEW YORK TIMES!!!

http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/travel/07prague.html

About Beth Custer
A woman for all seasons, hers is a big musical personality — versatile, adaptable, and very individual. – John L. Walters, London Guardian

BETH CUSTER is a San Francisco based composer, performer, bandleader, clarinet teacher, and the proprietress of BC Records.

Beth is a founding member of the notorious silent film soundtrack purveyors the Club Foot Orchestra, 4th world ambient ensemble Trance Mission, the quintet of esteemed clarinetists Clarinet Thing, the trip-hop duo Eighty Mile Beach, and the Latin-jazz-rock influenced Doña Luz 30 Besos. She now leads The Beth Custer Ensemble.

She composes for film, television, installations and the concert stage. Recent commissions include A Trip Down Market Street 1905/2005, a live outdoor cinema event by Melinda Stone produced by the Exploratorium; The Ballad of Pancho & Lucy musical for Campo Santo Theatre; and Bernal Heights Suite for the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble.

Recent awards include a Meet The Composer New Residency grant; two residencies at the Marin Headlands Art Center; a Phyllis Wattis Residency at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; a Mcknight Fellowship; two San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist grants; a Gerbode Award; an Argosy Foundation recording grant; and an Aaron Copland Recording fund award.

.. .. --> CDBABY LINK for BETH CUSTER AND THE LEFT COAST CHAMBER ENSEMBLE: Bernal Heights Suite --> Buy the CD

Member Since:

December 27, 2006

Sounds Like:

A Clip from the film, My Grandmother, soundtrack composed and performed by Beth Custer and friends.

Record Label:

BC Records

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