Beth Custer / Will Bernard Duo with Ken Emerson

Emmy Award-winning composer and clarinetist Beth Custer teams with groove-oriented guitarist Will Bernard for an intimate duo performance enhanced by Grammy-winning Hawaiian slack key guitarist Ken Emerson. This trio brings together Custer's experimental jazz sensibilities, Bernard's genre-spanning versatility, and Emerson's deep mastery of traditional Hawaiian music blended with jazz and blues influences.

Custer, who leads several ensembles including The Beth Custer Ensemble, Clarinet Thing, and Trance Mission, creates music that spans avant-garde jazz, free improvisation, and contemporary classical. Her recent release Russian Telegraph: Turnips showcases her evolving compositional voice. Bernard, a Berkeley-born artist equally at home in jazz, funk, R&B, rock, and hip-hop, has toured extensively and collaborated with artists from Don Cherry to John Medeski while leading his own boundary-stretching ensembles.

The duo of Custer and Bernard has maintained a remarkable musical partnership spanning three decades. Their 2023 album Sky captures what The Absolute Sound describes as "brief musical conversations, sometimes tight, sometimes dreamy, sometimes whimsical, flavored by folk, blues, old-time jazz, free improvisation, and chamber music." Berkeleyside notes their intuitive connection: "We know each other so well, there's nothing quite like it. You can end a phrase together."

Emerson adds another dimension to this musical conversation. A virtuoso who has performed for over 40 years, he's collaborated with Donald Fagen, Boz Scaggs, and the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir, bringing his deep understanding of Hawaiian slack key guitar techniques enriched by jazz and blues influences. His Grammy-winning artistry seamlessly blends traditional Hawaiian music with jazz, blues, and world music styles.

Expect an evening of telepathic interplay where Custer's clarinet work—ranging from growling bass clarinet to soaring Bb clarinet—weaves with Bernard's rich palette of guitar sounds including acoustic, electric lap steel, vintage acoustics, and resonator guitars, all enhanced by Emerson's distinctive slack key stylings that bring both traditional Hawaiian sensibilities and contemporary jazz innovation to the mix.