Sorry teetotalers, but few things go better together than fine music and fine wine, and City Winery is offering both Tuesday.
Located in Lower Manhattan at 155 Varick St. between Vandam and Spring streets, City Winery is home to an excellent selection of wine, food, and music, and tomorrow, the music at least will be free. The winery will be hosting pianist Marco Benevento as part of the 4th Annual Hudson Square Music & Wine Festival.
Benevento grew up in New Jersey before attending the Berklee College of Music and eventually settling in New York. While at a Medeski, Martin & Wood show, he ran into an old friend of his from high school, drummer Joe Russo. The pair of them snared a series of joint gigs at the Knitting Factory, the fruit of which became the Benevento/Russo duo, one of the modern jam scene's most exciting partnerships. In 2007, Benevento took up a live residency at Tonic, and began touring extensively in various configurations.
Benevento's approach to the piano is unique. Though his roots are in jazz, his sensibility is thoroughly modern. He runs a normal acoustic piano through a battery of pedals and effects, and employs modified children's toys to get all manner of unearthly timbres out of his instrument.
Generally performing in a trio setting with bassist Reed Mathis and either Andrew Barr or Matt Chamberlain on drums, Benevento guides his group easily through his music's odd turns. They might be improvising, but they perform with such a swift, sure sense of each other's instincts that their music hardly betrays its off-the-cuff origins.
Benevento plays at 5:30 p.m. at City Winery on Tuesday, July 10 — it's free, and it's gonna be great. Come on out!
