CLARINETIST, SINGER , and composer Beth Custer has ushered me through so many epochs of my life in San Francisco. She has no idea, but her music has tickled, teased, amused, intrigued, and downright provoked my intellect and aesthetic for the whole 13 years of my residence in this town. I don't expect that to change in the upcoming decade, either.

Her work with the legendary Club Foot Orchestra – known to me only by virtue of recorded media – set the stage for this particular obsession. Live scores for Metropolis? Freeow! I would have been so there. And then there was The Shirt I Slept In (BC) – a dazzling collection of Custer's music for short films and suchlike. It was a tour de force of wit, melody, and compositional complexity, from the kick-up-your-heels fun of "Fall of the Imperialist" to the heartrending elegy of "The Lips That Kissed the Paper," and it was a milestone acoustic recording that landed smack-dab in the middle of the mid-'90s rockers-versus-ravers food fight like a giant rhubarb pie of musical love, all melty dollops of ice cream and finger-licking sweet-sour filling.

And what about her turn on ODC Theater's stage, participating in a rather daring sound clash with prepared-piano enthusiast Eric Glick-Reiman, art-guitar übermensch Fred Frith, and the fabulous Thinking Fellers Union Local 282? The Fellers' bouncy, understated post-prog was a jarring counterpoint to the Custer-Frith-Reiman trinity's breathless whispers, fumbling clatters, and admirably Taoist adherence to the principles of (musical) nonaction. And yet, the contrasting flavors turned out to be a bit of "chocolate in my peanut butter" that made for an utterly memorable evening of music.

I need to tell you about all this because you have to understand my unadulterated music-fan love of Custer's music. You have to grok the range of this woman's capacity to produce sound. Because only then will you understand why I desperately wish I had chosen to attend a different performance in her final series of shows as the Lab's composer in residence.

If only I had picked the clarinet night ... seriously. Agony Pipes and Misery Sticks (BC), her latest recording with Clarinet Thing, an extraheavy ensemble of Bay Area woodwind superstars such as Ben Goldberg and Ralph Carney, is a marvel. It's beautiful. It's full of nuance and all the sweet, lush tones that only a single, masterfully embouchured reed can produce. It leapfrogs genres and eras, from Duke Ellington's bawdy swing to the vivid, percolating sounds of Pixinguinha. There's comical polka, languid circus music, dreamy ballads, and more than a touch of spiritual breakthrough. I swoon.

Backed by a Meet the Composers grant, Custer has enjoyed a prolific three-year Lab residency that's been full of multifaceted performance, multimedia collaboration, and no shortage of composition and recording. She closed her residency with a week-plus run showcasing her diverse talents, and I didn't pick the right night to make the scene. There is one more angle to the Custer dodecahedron of sound, the singer-songwriter angle, and for me, it's just the wrong configuration. It's not that she can't sing. Quite the contrary – she's got a crooning alto that could melt ice. It's not that she doesn't have the lyrics – "Empire of the U.S.," off her new release, Respect as a Religion (BC), is a lyrical marvel of simmering bile and political insight. The lineup had everything going for it, all top-shelf players such as wild-style keyboardist Graham Connah and guitarist David James (the Coup, Spearhead).

So why, then, does the singer-songwriter output of this talented musician remind me so much of Sheryl Crow? I'm just not feelin' it. There was compositional intrigue and world-class jams, humor, and passion, and everybody had killer chops, but the ensemble, in the end, reminded me of something you'd hear on the blanched radio love child of KFOG and KOIT. I swear to gawd, there were moments that were startlingly akin to drive-time easy-listening.

The place was packed, however, which leads me to two conclusions: pick your Custer with care, and keep in mind that there's no accounting for taste. In this case, mine. Beth Custer plays a Clarinet Thing CD-release party Tues/24, Freight and Salvage Coffee House, Berk. (510) 548-1761. The Beth Custer Ensemble perform as part of Hometown June 10-12 and 17-19, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, S.F. (415) 978-2787. (Josh Wilson)