Living Daylights (Club Helsinki, April 19, 2001)
By Seth Rogovoy

(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass., April 20, 2001) - Jazz musicians have for the most part been building their improvisations upon the foundation of blues and pop standards for the better part of the last century. In recent years, however, some more adventurous musicians have gone beyond the tried and true and sought to build jazz-style improvisations on the music of other styles and cultures.

There is nothing particularly new about this. Dave Brubeck offered his "jazz impressions" of Japan, Eurasia and Mexico in the late 1950s and '60s, and John Coltrane, perhaps best known for his reworking of the Broadway melody, "My Favorite Things," was deep into Indian and African music by the end of his foreshortened career in the late '60s.

But the pan-global approach has become a veritable jazz movement in the past few years, particularly amongst the forward-leading musicians of the avant-garde. The Seattle-based trio Living Daylights are an exponent of this widening of cultural and geographical horizons in jazz. And as they demonstrated in a fiery and dynamic 75-minute set on Thursday night at Club Helsinki, the jazz approach is as well suited to the haunting, minor-key melodies and irregular, jumpy tempos of Eastern European and Balkan music. In Living Daylights case, they overlay traditional melodies and original composition in the style of traditional melodies and rhythmic patterns on top of a bed of contemporary drum beats, often referred to as "jungle" and "drums 'n' bass." It is a punchy, skippy sound, and drummer Dale Fanning has found ways to absorb the regular beats of the dance floor with the irregular beats of Balkan folk music.

The combination made for shimmering and surprising juxtapositions when saxophonist Jessica Lurie veered from minor to major back to minor modes, pinching her notes to give them the feel of Balkan flute music or squealing through her horn with bursts of precise honks recalling John Zorn. Arne Livingston proved a sympathetic foil to Lurie on his instrument, which was ostensibly an electric bass but which through a combination of subtle electronic effects and his own virtuosic invention was as much a guitar as a bass.

Lurie introduced the number "Pike or Pine" as a tune about being lost in Seattle. With its alternating themes of Ottoman melody and Latin dance beats it was an apt musical representation of an identity crisis, but as much an exploration of shared elements as differences.

Most of the pieces the trio played were based in an Eastern European mode, which provided ample room for soloing by each musician, as well as inventive duetting. Livingston often doubled Lurie's melodies, which despite their hyperkineticism and risky leaps were played with fleet accuracy and precision. Her bent and split notes and duck calls were rendered with surprising finesse, and she was also an intriguing performer, digging deep into her solos with her entire body, drawing them with her instrument and inhabiting them with her knees and legs.

Living Daylights often gets lumped in with "groove" or "jam-band" music, and it's easy to see why. Well-played jazz is always a kind of jamming, groove music. The difference between Living Daylights and your average jam-band, however, is the difference between a Picasso and a paint-by-numbers kit. Lurie, Fanning and Livingston fracture their music's perspective in unique and profound ways utterly devoid of cliches, yet with an inviting, melodic beauty. As such, their appeal extends to both traditionalists, modernists and post-modernists.

[This review originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on April 21, 2001. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 2001. All rights reserved.]