Search results for

The last year and a half hasn't been easy for the award-winning jazz pianist and composer, who spent months in a coma and almost died. But he has a new album out and is performing again.

Seeger was a leading figure in the 20th century resurgence of American traditional music and a noted field collector of rural Southern music. He recorded hundreds of musicians in their homes and local performing venues.

Mike Disfarmer snapped portraits of anyone and everyone in the small town of Heber Springs, Ark. The photos spanned a period from the Great Depression through World War II. Guitarist Bill Frisell composed a series of musical vignettes based for Disfarmer's work on a new album appropriately called Disfarmer.

From the late 1940s to the mid-'60s, Latin music was hugely popular in America's Jewish community. Entire albums were recorded as testaments to the phenomenon. One of them, which put Jewish classics to a Latin beat, has just been reissued. This weekend, it will be re-created in concert at Lincoln Center in New York.

The owner of a popular West Bluff Vietnamese restaurant is facing allegations of tax evasion and filing false tax returns.

Take one part Billie Holiday, two parts Doris Day, toss in a little island indie-pop and you get Zee Avi, a 23-year-old singer-songwriter from Malaysia who's just released her eponymous debut album. Avi talks to Guy Raz about her musical influences.

Kurtis Blow, one of the first superstars of rap, celebrates his 50th birthday Sunday. His 1980 megahit "The Breaks" introduced to the world a new sound that would come to be called "rap." NPR's Guy Raz called him up in Burlington, Vt., where he is currently on tour, to find out what he has been doing lately.

Ann Patchett first read The Ambassadors — that notoriously opaque Henry James novel — at the suggestion of a good friend. Little did she know she was about to discover "the literary equivalent of a religious text."

In July, thousands of NPR's All Songs Considered listeners cast votes for their favorite songs of 2009's first half. Bob Boilen, the show's host, discusses the results and plays some of listeners' favorite songs with NPR's Melissa Block.

The Canadian pianist's latest release is a collection of "easy" sonatas by Joseph Haydn. With lyrical proclamations and high-minded fun, Hamelin reveals Haydn's mastery of melody, harmony and form.