While singing at a jazz festival in Big Bear Lake, California, Sandra Marlowe participated in what was called “diva night”: singers from different jazz groups performed together on stage. The event was so popular that the singers repeated it at a few other festivals, filling the house each time. When she returned to Coeur d’Alene from the Bay Area in 2018, Marlowe knew she wanted to grow her music community.

“I believe in blooming where you are planted,” Marlowe said of returning to the area. “I’m also a teacher, so I was trying to get out and play a little bit and meet people… I started meeting a lot of really good singers, and I had this idea: Wouldn’t it be fun if we put all these different women on stage.

This Friday and Saturday, the Divas will perform “What She Said… Best” at Hamilton Listening Studio. The interactive cabaret show covers several musical genres and is intended to be a collection of the group’s greatest hits, as well as the members’ memories of life on the road in show business.

The members of the group are between 20 and 70 years old.

Marlowe laughed at the idea that the band was already releasing a “best of.” The Divas’ first show was scheduled to be “one night only” in 2022 at the Jacklin Cultural Center in Post Falls. Of this show, Marlowe said: “I thought let’s throw it out there and see what sticks. … It was a very good response and the women appreciated it.

“Everyone had a great time, the creative process was really cool,” she said, “so we kept doing it.”

There is a “diva” for different genres: pop diva, country diva, Broadway diva, jazz diva. Marlowe falls into the category of jazz diva, but she said the members all end up blending into each other’s genres.

“Carol, who is normally our blues diva, said, ‘Hey, you’re stepping on my toes,’ and she was joking. We said it on stage because our show is very interactive with the audience,” Marlowe explained.

Beth Rainey started out as a pianist for the group, but when the pop diva couldn’t perform, Rainey decided to do so as well, and has been doing so ever since.

“I showed up to their first rehearsal still pregnant, I think,” Rainey said. “Or maybe I just had my child.”

Rainey said part of what attracted her to the project was that she was always looking for strong female-led projects. At 34, Rainey already has a decade of performing under her belt, but says the experience has pushed her to grow.

“As a solo singer, it took me on a little emotional journey,” Rainey said.

Being surrounded by people who understand her identity as a mother and an artist has been a godsend.

“That’s been the hardest part of all this is just adjusting my gig lifestyle to a new priority, and they’re a really safe group to deal with that with,” Rainey said.