Marco Benevento's *Glera* Lands Tomorrow, and It Sounds Like the Valley That Made It

Tomorrow, July 24, Woodstock-and-Accord keyboardist Marco Benevento releases Glera, and it arrives the way the best local records do — quietly confident, genre-agnostic, and unmistakably a product of this place.

Benevento has been one of the Hudson Valley's most reliably inventive musical citizens for years: a keyboardist and producer long rooted in the Woodstock orbit, equally at home behind a piano, a synth rig and a mixing board. Glera is his forthcoming studio effort, previewed earlier this year with initial singles, and its own album description promises music that "moves cinematically without becoming precious," with "jazz improvisation sharing space alongside reggae pocket, orchestral elements, and psych-pop atmosphere." Which, honestly, reads less like a press blurb and more like a decent map of what a curious Hudson Valley musician actually listens to on a given week.

The timing is a small gift to locals. Just ten days ago, on July 14, Benevento turned up on a Tubby's bill in Kingston alongside Dream Crease and NTHNL — the exact kind of unfussy, small-room appearance that separates a working valley musician from a visiting brand. He plays the DIY spots and the marquee rooms with the same face. That's not a marketing strategy; that's just how the scene works when it's healthy.

Why it matters: the Hudson Valley loves to trade on its recording history — the barns, the studios, Grossman's ghost, Levon's floor — but a legacy is only as alive as this year's release calendar. Confirmed local street dates in this exact window are genuinely scarce; Mikaela Davis's Graceland Way landed back in April, and beyond that the summer has been thin on new Hudson Valley records with a July-to-August date. That makes Glera the summer's flag-planting — proof that the valley isn't just a place bands pass through, but a place they make things.

So stream it tomorrow, buy it if you're the type, and remember you can probably catch the man himself at a bar down the street next month. In the Hudson Valley, the guy on the new record is also the guy at Tubby's. Long may it stay that way.

Sources: Jambands: Benevento previews Glera; Glera on Bandcamp; Tubby's calendar