The Club Foot Orchestra was founded in 1983 by Richard Marriott as the house band of the San Francisco Bayview district performance art nightclub, the Club Foot. Club Foot Orchestra was known around town for their dramatic, complex music when clarinetist Beth Custer and Marriot started creating scores for classic silent movies. Pioneers of modern music for silent film, Club Foot brings together sounds of Eastern European music, impressionism, jazz fusion, and many other styles. Their versatile instrumentation of woodwinds, brass, bowed strings, keyboard, guitar, and percussion has often been augmented by voices, string quartet, Balinese gamelan, and kinetic sculptural machinery. They have performed at Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, The Smithsonian, and SF Jazz, among many other venues in the US, Mexico, and Canada. Current members of CFO include Sheldon Brown (woodwinds), Chris Grady (trumpet), Gino Robair (percussion), Kymry Esainko (piano), Alisa Rose (violin), Sascha Jacobsen (double bass), Deirdre McClure (conductor), along with Richard Marriott (brass and woodwinds), and Beth Custer (clarinets and keyboard).
For the 2022 festival, Club Foot performed with Pandit Krishna Bhatt as Club Foot Hindustani to accompany Prem Sanyas.
SFSFF Performances
Festival 2013, Festival 2016, Greatest Hits with Club Foot Orchestra 2018, Festival 2019, Festival 2022
