Marco Benevento

There are two distinct sides to Marco Benevento — the avant-garde jazz experimenter and the polished pop craftsman. The songwriter’s early work is mostly instrumental and occasionally spacey, but his recordings have become more melodic and straight-up catchy in recent years. And he’s started singing. Benevento’s latest studio release, the quasi-concept record The Story of Fred Short, takes its cues from ’70s album rock (think Elton John or Van Morrison), but he hasn’t abandoned his art-music roots completely: The album’s second half consists of a seven-part mini-suite about the 19th-century Native American shaman who reportedly once lived in the building that now houses Benevento’s studio in upstate New York.