Madeleine Peyroux delivers subtle, elegant show at the Moore

Madeleine Peyroux's music is an exploration in volume but not in the direction of loud, louder, loudest. No, the Georgia-born jazz singer takes it the other way: quiet, quieter, quietest.

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Madeleine Peyroux with Vienna Teng

WHERE: Moore Theatre
WHEN: Friday night

Friday night at the Moore, the bulk of her set was a subtle and somnolent affair drawing mostly from her recently released "Half the Perfect World." Lyrically, Peyroux's melancholy coos wander around like lost love letters or those never sent. And whether it an original tune or one she interprets, nature (rain in particular) is a common reference. From the "I'm going where the sun keeps shining through the pouring rain" of "Everybody's Talking" to Chaplin's "Smile" with the lilting inspiration

"When there are clouds in the sky, you'll get by/ If you smile through your fear and sorrow/ Smile and maybe tomorrow/ you'll see the sun come shining through for you."

Backed by a light and tight groovy jazz trio, Peyrouxopened with "Blue Alert," a creeping love-is-a-battle piece originally penned by Leonard Cohen and Anjani Thomas. The bluesy slow burner set the down tempo and ponderous mood that was to follow. It also wasn't the first time Peyroux referenced Cohen.

"Leonard makes me work hard," she confessed before playing the self-penned title track from her new album. Midway in the set, it was the loudest she played all evening. In addition to being one of only four originals on the new record, it was also one of few originals in her set; another being Once In a While." When considered together, these two songs add a layer of sophistication to Peyroux's oeuvre. Though the doldrums appear to be a strong influence on her as she sings "I'm all right, I've been lonely before," she seemed to know that it's not all gloom, taking a left hand turn into the light: "I'm tired of dying, I'm living instead."

Whereas her earlier work drew many comparisons to Billie Holiday, due in large part to her penchant to cover early jazz artists (Fats Waller, Bessie Smith, Ella Fitzgerald,) Peyroux is now working to shed that image. Her set focused on music from her own lifetime: Harry Nilsson's "Everybody's Talking," Tom Waits' "(Looking For) the Heart of Saturday Night," Randy Newman's "I Think It's Goin' To Rain," and the Serge Gainsbourg standard "La Javanaise."

The only glimpse she gave to her previous albums came at the end of the set with three songs from 2004's "Careless Love" an album that arrived long after her heralded '96 debut "Dreamland."

"My whole life is in this song," she explained before "Don't Wait Too Long."

Peyroux closed the show with one of the more uplifting verses of the evening, sending her fans off with an elegant goodbye "Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on/ Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long/ We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above/ Dance me to the end of love."

The chamber-folk pianist Vienna Teng, who was last seen in Seattle opening for Joan Baez, opened Friday's show with a set culled evenly from her three albums. The Stanford grad and former software engineer's set climaxed with an enchanting and lovely promise, "You've got a journey to make/ There's your horizon to chase/ So go far beyond where we stand no matter the distance/ I'm holding your hand."

The song "Harbor" can be heard on her Web site(www.viennateng.com) and for the uninitiated, it comes highly recommended.

Shawn Telford is a Seattle-based freelance writer who can be reached at eyeheartmusic@yahoo.com.

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