MARCO BENEVENTO TRIO
SUNDAY, JUNE 27 • 5:30 PM
RACHEL BROWNE THEATRE (TD JAZZ LAB)
FREE
SUNDAY, JUNE 27 • 8 PM & 12:30 AM
RACHEL BROWNE THEATRE
Club Pass and Wristband venue
Individual show ticket: $15 adv./$18 door
For an exhilarating glimpse into the future of jazz keyboards, look no further than Marco Benevento. A melodically inventive musical adventurer who artfully employs pedals, amplifiers, rejiggered electronic toys and sundry effects, Benevento has forged a fascinating repertoire of songs by the likes of Neil Young, Amy Winehouse, and Beck, interspersed with wildly original compositions.
However, amid all the mind-bending sonic imagination, the core of the Marco Benevento Trio is their collective energy. Reed Mathis, Matt Chamberlain, and Andrew Barr provide a takeoff point for searing post-jazz improvisations. Their rendition of “Heartbeats,” originally performed by The Knife, is born again as an instrumental electro-clash jam. The enchanted lyricism of My Morning Jacket’s “Golden” floats above a hypnotic pulse, allowing the performance to patiently reveal itself in parts both pastoral and vast. The classic acoustic guitar intro to Led Zeppelin’s “Friends” is riffed out on acoustic piano, but it’s the trio’s unrelenting finesse that redefines the song in a new light.
With his brand-new CD Between The Needles & Nightfall, Benevento continues to define himself as one of the most prolific new voices of his era, blurring genres from song to song, and more often from measure to measure, with his own take on simple pop pleasures, dance party rave-ups, and art jazz experimentation. He speaks in modern sonic tongues, all cut-and-pasted, tweaked-out and glitchy, but full of wide-eyed wonder that rejoices in the limitless horizons of sound and melody.
Pictures from the first weekend of the 2010 TD Winnipeg International Jazz Festival
Marco Benevento Toys Around With Experimental Jazz
One of the young artists we are most excited about this year is Marco Benevento. Paul caught Marco’s performances at the Winter Jazz Festival in New York and then again at South By Southwest in ‘09. On both occasions, Marco played to jam-packed rooms and Paul was so moved by Marco’s performances that he promptly invited Marco up to Winnipeg to play for the festival on Sunday, June 27.
Marco was profiled on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered last Sunday. You can listen to that radio segment HERE.
