Marco Benevento

An inventive keyboardist and singer, the New York-based Marco Benevento is a broadly inspired performer known for his expansive, psychedelic sound. A graduate of Berklee College of Music, Benevento’s musical palette is both deep and wide with roots in modern creative jazz, indie rock, jam band, and post-rock/experimental styles. A member of the New York experimental music scene since his involvement in the Jazz Farmers from 1999 to 2001, he as also been also a member of Benevento Russo Duo and fronted his own band since 2006, issuing a bevy of wide-ranging albums including 2009′s Me Not Me, 2012′s TigerFace, and 2019′s Let It Slide. Along with performing, he is the founder and recording engineer of Fred Short, a studio in Upstate New York where he recorded 2022′s Benevento.
Born in 1977 and raised in the northern New Jersey town of Livingston, Benevento studied piano and befriended an aspiring drummer named Joe Russo in a junior high detention hall. After high school, while Russo migrated westward to Boulder, Colorado and fell into the hippie jam band scene there, the more jazz-inclined Benevento moved to Boston to attend the Berklee College of Music, from which he graduated in 1999 after studying keyboards under noted jazz pianist and instructor Joanne Brackeen.
Following college, Benevento formed a popular Boston-area improvisational outfit called the Jazz Farmers, which continued when Benevento resettled in New York City in 2001. Running into his old junior high buddy Russo at a Medeski, Martin & Wood gig, Benevento accepted an invitation to perform a series of duo gigs at the Knitting Factory, which turned into a full-time partnership as the Benevento/Russo Duo. Benevento released four albums with Russo: Benevento/Russo Duo, Darts, Best Reason to Buy the Sun, and Play Pause Stop. Tying into Russo’s roots in the jam band scene, the duo also spent much of 2006 touring as half of former Phish leader Trey Anastasio’s backing band.
In 2007, Benevento began a live residency at the New York club Tonic, which led to the August 2007 release of Live at Tonic, a three-CD set taken from those shows that ranged from traditional small-combo jazz to post-rock/experimental soundscapes. Benevento signed to Hyena Records and released Invisible Baby in 2008 with bassist Reed Mathis (Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey and Tea Leaf Green) and drummers Andrew Barr (the Slip) and Matt Chamberlain. It was followed by Me Not Me on Royal Potato Family in 2009 with the same players. Benevento recorded 2010′s Between the Needles & Nightfall for Royal Potato Family with Mathis and Barr. The album was tracked at Brooklyn’s Trout Studio with engineer Bryce Goggin (Pavement, Akron/Family). Benevento promoted the recording by taking the trio on the road, playing club dates and festivals in the United States and Canada. TigerFace, his next studio album, utilized a wide range of players. It was produced by Tom Biller and Goggin, and released in September of 2012.
After extensive touring and a brief rest, Benevento returned to the recording studio with his trio — bassist Dave Dreiwitz and drummer Andy Borger — and producer Richard Swift. For the first time, he decided to sing on one of his records. Inspired by everyone from LCD Soundsystem to David Bowie to My Bloody Valentine, he wrote a series of outré pop songs and collaborated on lyrics with Ween’s Aaron Freeman. Swift was released in September of 2014. In 2016, Benevento delivered his fifth studio album, and second to feature his vocals, The Story of Fred Short. Once again featuring backing from bassist Dreiwitz and drummer Borger, the album also showcased Benevento’s first foray into layering his psychedelic, dance-oriented pop with guitars.
Early the following year, Benevento issued the Woodstock Sessions, part of an ongoing series of recordings cut in front of an invited studio audience at Applehead studio in Woodstock, New York. He then paired with El Michels Affair’s Leon Michels for the vintage psych-pop-and-soul-inspired Let It Slide in 2019. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he stayed busy at his Woodstock-based Fred Short Studios where he recorded his 2022 full-length, Benevento, an album that found him drawing inspiration from and paying homage to Woodstock’s psychedelic cultural history. ~ Matt Collar & Stewart Mason