Trumpeter Jaimie Branch debuted to great acclaim in 2017 with Fly or Die and has succeeded in keeping that inspired group together. Lester St. Louis assumed the cello chair in place of Tomeka Reid for the band’s 2019 sophomore outing, Bird Dogs of Paradise, and he’s heard as well on this bracing live set, recorded in Zurich in January 2020 with the COVID shutdown around the corner. While the first two albums featured guests laying down bits of additional guitar, cornet, percussion, voice, and synth, FLY or DIE LIVE is quartet all the way, with Branch, St. Louis, bassist Jason Ajemian, and drummer Chad Taylor giving their all on repertoire mainly from the Fly or Die studio albums. With deep roots in the Chicago avant-garde, Branch has access to a wide range of trumpet sounds, from warm, soaring legato melodies to bristly extended techniques and subtly deployed electronic effects. But to a degree, her vision for Fly or Die transcends her instrument: She sings, for instance, on “prayer for amerikkka, Pt. 1 & 2,” coaxing her bandmates to add backup vocals as she addresses the Swiss crowd regarding the state of a world about to get much worse. There’s a lightheartedness, however: “love song,” another vocal number, has a subtitle that can’t be printed here, and Branch succeeds in getting the crowd to sing it with her. (“It’ll make ya feel better, Switzerland!”) There are sonic signatures that set this group apart, the main one being an offbeat mix of cello and bass, which can sound like one fat mega-bass during heated moments, or like a guitar and bass in the more intimate asides. Taylor not only crushes the relentless grooves of “simple silver surfer,” “theme 001,” “theme 002,” “the storm,” “nuevo roquero estéreo,” and the tricky finale, “theme nothing,” but he’s also a serious student of the Zimbabwean mbira, which he plays beautifully on “birds of paradise” and elsewhere.