Women make a place singing in region's jazz scene

Early last week, three women sat around a table in Saratoga Springs and talked about jazz.

They talked about singing. They talked about swinging. They talked about their lives and careers in music, working a Capital Region jazz scene that's rich with talent. They talked about gigging at venues large and small, busy and hushed. They talked about playing to crowds who might not know the music so well.

And they talked about the influential jazz recordings of the 20th century, little masterworks of songcraft that caught their ear and continue to inspire them — standards that act like a time machine, zapping them and their audiences back to the era of smoky bars and swinging offbeats.