Clarinet Thing

© 2009 BC Records | BC 11

CLARINET THING is a chamber quartet of jazz clarinetists featuring Sheldon Brown, Ben Goldberg, Harvey Wainapel, and founder Beth Custer. Cry, Want is their second release and includes Brown’s arrangements of tunes by Jimmy Giuffre, Carla Bley, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Alexandre Stellio, as well as originals by Brown and Goldberg.

The 2009 DownBeat Critic’s poll, representing the votes of 120 international jazz critics, listed Goldberg as one of the top twelve jazz clarinetists in the world, as well as selecting both Goldberg and Wainapel as “Rising Stars” on clarinet.

Founded in 1989, Clarinet Thing performs beautifully crafted jazz and new music, completely unamplified, on the family of clarinets — from the baby Eb clarinet up to the large contra alto clarinet. On the forefront of the genre, Clarinet Thing began delighting audiences at Radio Valencia and Annie’s Hall in the 1990’s and has grown in popularity to sell out larger venues like Yoshis, Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse, and Old First Church Concert Series.

Clarinet Thing is a killer quartet that plays a rich woody lend of original music, Ellingtonia, Brazilian choro…and other pieces that pop and sway with the pregnant sound of an improvising clarinet choir.

—Jesse Hamlin, San Francisco Chronicle