The house baby-grand piano at the Blue Nile, now an enhanced venue following summer renovations, proved a perfect vehicle for jam-jazz powerhouse Marco Benevento last Saturday night, September 28.

Marco Benevento

Familiar to local audiences with effects-heavy play in Garage a Trois, the Brooklyn-based Benevento jetted to Louisiana for a two-night run without his usual Hammond organ and electric Wurlitzer piano to promote his stellar new album TigerFace (Royal Potato Family). Playing to a packed club sporting renovations that include new lighting rig (row of LEDs mounted above and behind the musicians), stage elevation, improved sound and removal of a column near stage left that ruined many a sightline, Benevento showed the chops that elevated him out of the late ’90s underground jazz scene in New York City, and dominated Blue Nile’s baby grand for two-plus hours. The peak moments Saturday night, however, came when Benevento orchestrated an improvised soundscape that ranged from dissonant jazz to disco with stellar performances by both bassist Dave Dreiwitz (Ween) and drummer Andy Borger (Tom Waits, Norah Jones), who ushered in a sinister drum breakdown to close the first number to earn the first of many yells-of-delight from the audience. Heavy on jams while sparse on vocals (save the circus-fun sing-along of “Limbs of a Pine”), the trio’s set sailed toward 2 a.m. with its rowdy crowd intact.

Having earned such audiences with mad skills in collaboration and improvisation, Benevento flexed these muscles in the night’s closing groove as he took the lead melody to Pink Floyd’s “Fearless” (off the 1971 album, Meddle) and weaved in several stanzas of Elton John’s “Benny and the Jets” before Borger and Dreiwitz locked in to build a series of punishing swells that flawlessly segued back into the melodic bliss of “Fearless.” A thrilling end to a most-satisfying experience.