Jazz Beat: Megan Birdsall at the Blue Room

One trait common among Kansas City’s best jazz musicians is a drive to explore. Some mesh blues-based improvisation with hip-hop or rap. Others prod jazz traditions with uncommon inquisitiveness and their own unique personalities. Singer Megan Birdsall fits the latter category: She starts with standards, drawing on jazz and well-known pop, then questions the way we recognize them, twists them with respect and, through an exquisite voice, pulls you tightly into her version. She might tease unexpected new intimacy from “Skylark” or plumb the deeply internalized desire in “Wichita Lineman.” Then again, she might push “Miss Otis Regrets” — a song about a woman being hanged — into wild, bawdy territory. Thursday night at the Blue Room, Birdsall is joined by Andrew Ouellette on piano, Ben Leifer on bass and Matt Leifer on drums.

Megan Birdsall

7 p.m. Thursday, March 9, at the Blue Room, 1600 East 18th Street (free)