The daughters of Joni and Joan are alive and well and living these days in places like Buenos Aires and Portland, Ore. They also were on stage Tuesday night at the Troubadour, demonstrating to a transfixed crowd how they've absorbed the lessons of the aforementioned Mitchell, Baez and other elder stateswomen of the singer-songwriter sisterhood.

But Argentine Abstract Expressionist Juana Molina, who headlined Tuesday's show, and Oregonian urban folkie Laura Gibson, who helped open it, also are finding inventive new ways to update and transmute two distinctly feminine singing styles and sensibilities.

Molina's L.A. appearances have grown enormously in confidence and artistic daring since her first, reportedly faltering debut at McCabe's in the late '90s. A Times critic's description of that inauspicious event used words like "disastrous" and "visibly distraught" to describe the former com- ic actress' U.S. coming-out party.