Russian Telegraph

Russian Telegraph, named for two of San Francisco’s 47 hills is a collective:

• David James – guitar, voice
• Chris Grady – trumpet
• Jordan Glasgow – keyboards
• Keith McArthur – bass
• John Hanes – drums
• Beth Custer, voice, clarinets
• Presented by Earthwise of Palo Alto
• Beth Custer is an Emmy Award winning, San Francisco based composer, performer, recording artist, bandleader, and the proprietor of BC Records. She has numerous recordings out with ensembles The Beth Custer Ensemble, Eighty Mile Beach, Clarinet Thing, Trance Mission and Club Foot Orchestra. She performs Bb, alto, bass, contrabass clarinets, flute, tenor sax, voice, piano, percussion, and toys.

Beth has composed for the contemporary chamber ensembles Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Zeitgeist, Earplay, Turtle Island and Kronos String Quartets; for the theatre productions of Campo Santo Theatre, Berkeley and San Diego Repertory Theatres, Magic Theatre, California Shakespeare, Overtone Industries, and Cornerstone Theatre; for the dance troupes AXIS Dance Company, Joe Goode Performance Group, ROCO Dance, Flyaway Productions, Ledoh, Harupin Ha, and Osseus Labyrinth; for the films of William Farley, Judith Ehrlich, Brad Coley, Cathy Lee Crane, Melinda Stone, George Spies, Koohan Paik, KQED’s Independent View and Deep Look, and for the silent films of Club Foot Orchestra including for a season of CBS/Film Roman’s Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat.

Beth created four musicals with writer Octavio Solis produced by Campo Santo Theatre and Overtone Industries. Her collaborative scores with inventor and MacArthur Fellow Trimpin led her to compose Vinculum Symphony, a site-specific, large-scale work that unites chamber musicians with experimental instrument builders.

Her numerous awards include artist residencies at Blue Mountain Center, Montalvo Arts Center, Civitella Ranieri Center, Headlands Center for the Arts, and Wild Acres. Other awards include a McKnight Fellowship in Minneapolis, University of Wyoming residency, Meet The Composer New Residency award, American Composers Forum Commissioning grants, San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist grants, Zellerbach Family Fund awards, Gerbode award, Argosy Foundation recording grant, and an Aaron Copland Recording Fund award for her silent film score My Grandmother.

David James is a San Francisco-born composer, guitarist, vocalist and bandleader who draws from his years of experience in hip-hop, film and theater scores, afrobeat, and more, bringing these influences to bear in his “ … thoughtfully composed, boundary-blurring new music.” (All About Jazz)

James’s compositions join an engaging melodicism to his explorations of rhythms and textures from across the African diaspora and beyond. This can be heard in the political instrumentals and songs of his long-running rhythm-horns-and-strings sextet GPS, which features clarinet, trombone, viola, electric guitar, acoustic bass, and drums.

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After a youth of ambient/noise and rock groups, became recording and touring guitarist of Spearhead. Later, while beginning to develop his own compositional voice, he toured and recorded as a member of the Coup, the Beth Custer Ensemble and Afrofunk Experience. He has performed chamber jazz at the community-level salon Red Poppy Art House (SF); live scores to silent films in the screening rooms of MoMA and SFMOMA, as well as in Prague, Tbilisi, and Cork (Ireland); and hip-hop at the Glastonbury Festival (UK) and the Fillmore (San Francisco).

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September 2023 brought the premiere of "Mission Rebel No. 1: Looking for Rev. Jesse James", a musical contemplation of David James's father, a San Francisco activist. The 12-part song cycle for GPS and additional vocalists was performed at the historic BRAVA Theater in San Francisco's Mission District and at The Mitchell Park Community Center in Palo Alto.

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Along with GPS, David James currently co-leads the electric sextet Russian Telegraph and the guitar-clarinet-cello group Khachapuri Trio. He also performs with Jordan Glenn's BEAK, the Moe Staiano Ensemble, and Club Foot Quintet.

Chris Grady has also played with The Grassy Knoll, Club Foot Orchestra, Emily Bezar, Eighty Mile Beach, Tom Waits, The Residents, Gino Robair and Slow Poisoners.

Keith McArthur has played with Jai Uttal, Pothole and Sunkist. (Pothole by the way played an earlier Palo Alto show presented by Earthwise on March, 20, 1998 on a bill with The Mermen).

John Hanes has appeared with groups such as Chrome, Engorged With Blood, Pearl Harbor and the Explosions, The Henry Kaiser Band and Les Gwan Jupons.

Jordan Glasgow has played with Loveseat Congregation, Crowsong, Austin Willacy, and Forest Sun as well as engineering with various projects such as Klaxon Mutant Allstars, The Smashing Pumpkins.

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Host or Publisher Mark Weiss dba Earthwise