Jazz band playing tonight at Players Pub

The sounds of swinging mallets clanging on vibraphone bars, the reverberating thrum of bass strings and jazzy vocals will come to Players Pub tonight.

Sarah’s Swing Set, a local three-piece jazz band with 11 years of performance experience, will play at 8 p.m. today. Cover charge for the show is $5. A percussionist will join the band.

Musicians Sarah Flint and Robert Stright started Sarah’s Swing Set in 2003. Flint and Stright met each other while performing in another jazz group, Stardusters.

Ron Kadish, an IU alumnus who plays bass for Sarah’s Swing Set, was added soon after.

Flint said one of the attractions of her band’s live show is watching Stright play the vibraphone.

“He is amazing to watch,” Flint said. “He has got those mallets flying, and it is a lot more interesting to watch than a piano player.”

Flint said her band focuses on music from the American Songbook, which contains music primarily from the 1920s through the 1950s.

A self-taught musician, Flint plays guitar, flute, ukulele and percussion, in addition to vocals.

She currently instructs guitar and voice lessons in Bloomington and has been teaching music for more than 20 years.

Flint has played in several bands of different genres. She also released an album this year with her other band, Hoosier Darling, also called Gozpel Gurlz.

She said she does not have to try as hard to get her voice heard in jazz as she did with rock ’n’ roll. Her experiences with different genres do, however, affect her in her jazz singing.

“Since I come from such a diverse background, singing hard rock and country, I suppose I might have a different take on the jazz style,” Flint said. “I also scat a little bit.”

Scatting is a singing technique used to create a melody with nonsensical words.

Sarah’s Swing Set’s live jazz shows sometimes incorporate guest musicians. Among these include guitarist David Gulyas and New York City saxophonist and clarinetist Charles Frommer.

“The last few months have been just fantastic,” Flint said. “The crowds were wonderful, and the shows were really great.”

Kadish is a versatile bass player. In addition to Sarah’s Swing Set, he has recorded music with John Mellencamp, Jennie DeVoe and Ruthie Allen Lincoln, among many other musicians.

“I don’t really have a particular style,” he said. “I have a wide variety of styles that I call from.”

Kadish recollected a recent time when Sarah’s Swing Set was scheduled to play at Oliver Winery during a downpour.

“I got to the winery fully expecting them to say, ‘Sorry, but its raining too hard,’” he said. “And they didn’t. It was an outside gig.”

He said an audience came out, despite the wet weather. Oliver Winery put up awnings for the crowd.

“It was a blast,” he said. “Bloomington, where people sit out in the rain and listen to jazz.”