Born and raised in Seattle, saxophone and flute player Jessica Lurie developed her diverse style during Seattle's grunge era with groups like Living Daylights Trio and the Billy Tipton Memorial Saxophone Quartet.
Since then, she's been leading her own groups through original music that's complex but filled with fun. She brought one of those group — including trombonist Naomi Moon Siegel, guitarist Andy Coe, bassist Ben Feldman, and drummer Tarik Abouzeid — to the KNKX studios in 2017.
"I guess I've always been curious about a lot of different kinds of music. It's all folk tunes. That's kind of music I write, relentlessly eclectic," she said.
At the time of this interview, Lurie lived in Brooklyn, New York, but she grew up in Seattle with cool parents who played music and took her to see lots of concerts.
"Yeah, they liked a lot of different kinds of music. My dad was a classical player, but both my parents, yeah, they loved going to all kinds of shows," Lurie said.
Lurie's bands, like Living Daylights, often drew inspiration from other Seattle musicians, including the rock groups who put this city on the musical map.
"We were sort of the punky rocking jazz like we did play in nice jazz clubs for nice people often, but we were very loud at it," Lurie said.
Lurie thrives in the musical diversity of the Northwest, too.
"Seattle's a rock town, but there's the jazz thing, and there's the free thing, and there's everyone's in the Latin band, and then the African band, and then the kind of quasi-Balkan thing," Lurie said. "And then there's the sort of, you know, funk groove sideways thing. I don't know it seemed like it's a lot of eclectic stuff was happening, and I got to play a lot of it."
After performing "Straight Out of Everything," a relaxing melody inspired by both Jewish and Cuban musical traditions, Lurie closed her KNKX set with a twisting, turning, original tune called "Baba Yaga's Seven League Boots." The song is inspired by one of her favorite childhood books about an Eastern European witch.
"She traveled in seven league boots and she lived in a house on chicken legs. She used to eat people too; wasn't so great. But this is kind of about her, but it's also about like the young lovers who are escaping her clutches,'" Lurie said.
In the fall of 2023, Lurie returned to Seattle where performs often, and stays closely connected to fans and fellow musicians.
"My mother says I have 'bicoastalism,' like it's a disease, and I always feel like a Seattleite in New York," she said.
Songs heard in this episode:
- "Calder's Circus"
- "Straight Out of Everything"
- "Baba Yaga's Seven League Boots"
