Esmé Patterson has dropped the banjos and folk from her previous project Paper Bird, and in their place are electric guitars and a backing band worth getting behind.
Sherrill Milnes calls it "an avalanche of sound." Jessye Norman says it's "a cloud filled with silver." Singers and critics talk about the amazing voice of Leontyne Price on her 90th birthday.
The nominees in the Best Rap Album category show how hip-hop has, across multiple platforms from video to streaming audio to crowd-funding, come to own the Internet.
The Wu-Force's Wu Fei, Abigail Washburn and Kai Welch borrow a motif from Pixies' "Where Is My Mind" to soundtrack an inventive video for "Paper Lanterns."