There is nothing like blowing a horn! It oxygenates the body, clears the mind, and inspires moods from meditative to giddy, ecstatic to emphatic.

Founded and led by Beth Custer since 1990, Clarinet Thing features five of the Bay Area's finest clarinet virtuosos performing arrangements of Duke Ellington, Eubie Blake, John Carter, Bobby Bradford, Pixinguinha, Weill, Podgorski, and others, as well as original compositions. Fifteen years of live recordings in Bay Area cafes, bars, churches, and concert halls were gleaned for their first album release, Agony Pipes and Misery Sticks, two slang terms for the clarinet.

San Franciscan Beth, praised by San Francisco music critic Phil Elwood as "Synonymous with the best and most adventurous of the Bay Area's cutting-edge musical sounds," is well known across a wide spectrum of local scenes for her work with the Club Foot Orchestra, 4th world ambient ensemble Trance Mission, trip-hop duo Eighty Mile Beach, and the Latin-jazz-rock influenced Dona Luz 30 Besos, not to mention her numerous dance and theater compositions and TV and indie film soundtrack work.

Tonight's quintet also includes clarinetists extraordinaire Ben Goldberg (New Klezmer Trio, Junk Genius, Brainchild), Ralph Carney (Tom Waits, Devo, B52's, Jonathan Richman), Sheldon Brown (Omar Sosa, Club Foot Orchestra, Klezmorim), and Harvey Wainapel (McCoy Tyner, Joe Henderson, Ray Charles, Airto Moreira). Come be blown away!