Search results for

Hear a preview of the 50th annual Monterey Jazz Festival, which includes Gerald Wilson's specially commissioned piece, Monterey Moods. Wilson and many other jazz luminaries, including Dave Brubeck, celebrate the festival's half-century mark this weekend.

Sophie Milman has a classic jazz voice that evokes smoky lounges, softly clinking glasses and the cool of the night. Her second CD, Make Someone Happy, contains her interpretations of many jazz standards, but also includes some surprising choices.

Last year, the band Grizzly Bear earned the acclaim of critics with Yellow House, recorded in and inspired by the childhood home of frontman Ed Droste. The Brooklyn band's songs are warm and comfortable, yet somehow strange and new.

As the frontman for pop-punk band Fall Out Boy, Pete Wentz glories in remaking the rules. He playfully subverts gender roles to undercut homophobia by wearing eyeliner, kissing his male bandmates on stage and wearing girls' jeans, yet somehow makes it all mainstream.

Luciana Souza's The New Bossa Nova features pop standards set to a Brazilian bossa nova beat.

Recognized in Time Magazine's 2007 list of the world's 100 most influential people, Senegal's Youssou N'Dour is known in some circles as "the most famous African singer alive." He discusses his new album (Rokku Mi Rokka) and the inspiring messages behind his lyrics.

In his new autobiography, Eric Clapton tells the story of his professional rise and his personal battles with substance abuse. In the first of a two-part interview, Clapton remembers the blues greats that influenced him as a young guitarist.

More than anything Malkmus has done, Real Emotional Trash engages in the sort of shape-shifting that marked Bob Dylan's career. He wears a different mask on virtually every song, and it certainly helps that the band is his strongest post-Pavement outfit yet.

For the Perry siblings of Tupelo, Miss. — ages 9, 14 and 16 — making music involves making unique instruments from car parts. The young family band with astonishingly mature blues chops demonstrates its craft in NPR's Studio 4A.

Country music legend Willie Nelson and jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis discover common ground and a mutual love of jazz standards and the blues on their album Two Men With The Blues. Here, the artists discuss their first-ever collaboration.

Edwards is one of the last men who knew the iconic bluesman Robert Johnson.

As fitness goes high-tech, even your bathroom scale is going digital. One company went from making old-fashioned spring-loaded scales to scales that aren't just digital but use all sorts of high-tech applications to talk directly to your wireless device.

Each year, limber librarians compete for the coveted gold book cart at the annual Librarian Book Cart Drill Championships. With elaborate dance, athletics and performance art routines, they vie to show that librarians can be hip.

The new album from the Philadelphia hip-hop band The Roots contains verses from the perspective of a child soldier in Sierra Leone, a campus shooter in America, and those in the grip of addictions. Rising Down may be the group's best album.

Twenty-five years after its first album, the New Jersey band is still selling out Madison Square Garden and putting out chart-topping singles. But these days, its sound is a little more country, and it's recording in Nashville. That may be because pop and rock songs have left behind the working-class, everyday guy, while country music sings straight to him.

Fresh Air's rock critic reviews The Con, the fifth album from Canadian twins Tegan and Sara Quin. Their music has been heard in a number of American TV shows, including Grey's Anatomy, The L Word and Medium.

The launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik 50 years ago this week marked the dawn of the space age — and sparked songwriters' imaginations.

The Emmys once were dominated by broadcast networks and then cable, with the rise of streaming services changing the balance of power and perhaps the awards themselves.

On Lumiere, Bob Brozman is the orchestra. He plays the National Tricone, charango, ukulele, baritone guitar and, well, everything else. Brozman has spent decades traveling and collaborating with musicians all over, which he synthesizes into his own music.

The soul singer's new album, The Real Thing: Words and Sounds Vol. 3, is generating quite a buzz. The award-winning singer talks about the events of her seven-year, singing career, including a new film in the works.

In the new movie I'm Not There, director Todd Haynes deploys six actors to portray the many lives of one man: Bob Dylan. Haynes talks about the unorthodox nature of the film and how he hopes it evokes Dylan's universe of the 1960s.

Choosing five favorite recordings is a tall order for any music lover, but especially for Yo-Yo Ma. The musically omnivorous super-cellist picks his top five favorites.

When Bridgewater came up empty after tracing her family tree back more than 100 years, she turned to West African music. After a trip to Mali in 2004, she discovered its complex musical heritage. Hear an interview about the inspiration behind her new album, Red Earth.

Measha Brueggergosman is a young soprano on the rise. Her major label debut, Surprise, features offbeat cabaret songs by Satie and Schoenberg. She describes the CD as "classical music letting its hair down."

When Panic at the Disco released its debut CD, its members hadn't yet graduated from high school. Three years later, Pretty. Odd marks the band's massive change from heart-on-sleeve emo-punk songs to Sgt. Pepper's-style rock. The group performs stripped-down songs in NPR's Studio 4A.