The quartet of Benevento, trumpeter Steven Bernstein, and members of Ween, Claude Coleman and Dave Dreiwitz performed together on one evening captured here. "Prestidigitation” was one of the songs and it was very jam-experimental. Certain sections of this piece would easily appeal to folk who like the Legendary Pink Dots. This song is experimental one minute and then fine jazz the next. I can really hear the Ween influence in this song and for that I really got a kick out of it.
Another track the quartet played was “Peppermint Hippo.” I sensed a Charlie "Bird" Parker like feel to this song. The guitar seemed to drag a little long for me but then again this is an experimental jazz group. I did not feel hip enough to listen to the track.
Macro Benevento had a couple of solo performances on this collection including “Seems So Long Ago Nancy” by Leonard Cohen. This was an interesting cover and I enjoyed listening to the distortion over the piano. I am thinking this was one of those live songs where people stood around in silence totally engulfed in the sounds.
A couple of other tracks that caught my attention were the Carly Simon cover “Nobody Does It Better” and a song called “Elmer’s Tune.” “Elmer’s Tune” had a vocal style that reminds me of something that Ben Folds may have done. The song was simple but upon listening to it you think you have heard over a million times before.
Pianists like Marco Benevento make jazz music entertaining to folk who usually do not listen to the genre. He has experimented, and yet has played music that can be appreciated even by a novice (such as myself). I know very little about this genre, yet I really did enjoy listening to the performances here — even if I felt a bit out of the loop during some songs.
I am sure that any jazz fan or jam band fan will appreciate this live performace a lot.
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