Will Bernard + Beth Custer

Will Bernard & Beth Custer at Bird & Beckett bring a guitar-and-clarinet duo the pair themselves call chamber jazz — lyrical and melodic in places, funky or raunchy in others. They have played together since the early 1980s, when both were in the Club Foot Orchestra, and between them have passed through Trance Mission, Clarinet Thing, Eighty Mile Beach, the Hieroglyphics Ensemble and TJ Kirk, whose album If Four Was One earned a Grammy nomination. Custer, a San Francisco clarinetist, composer and singer, plays Bb and bass clarinets; Bernard, now Brooklyn-based and more than ten albums deep as a leader, moves between vintage acoustics, resonator and electric lap steel guitars. Their 2023 duo album Sky runs from a Chopin-tinged waltz to swampy blues, and Custer calls the bookshop a favorite room.