Music Features

Host Christian McBride talks with vocalist and 2020 NEA Jazz Master Bobby McFerrin. We'll hear tracks from his vast catalog, stories from his illustrious career, and an impromptu jam with Christian.

The artist's community-oriented mixtape is a milestone of personal and professional transformation.

On his new album, The Weeknd lets us consider whether we would like to age into the shape of our fears or the shape of our most heroic dreams.

Saxophonist Tony Malaby, unlucky at the beginning of the pandemic after catching a very early case of the virus — the subsequent isolation imposed on his playing led him to a unique solution.

Songs Of Disappearance is an entire album of calls from endangered Australian birds. Last month, it briefly perched at No. 3 on the country's top 50 albums chart – ahead of Taylor Swift.

Bassist John Patitucci and his wife, cellist Sachi Patitucci, perform a moving ballad to celebrate the musicians we lost in 2021.

Boldly going where few gay men of color have been allowed to go before, Lil Nas X won the year by joyfully violating cultural taboos and exploiting media far more than it was able to exploit him.

The new documentary Get Back, cut from 50-year-old footage of Beatles recording sessions by director Peter Jackson, offers a chance to look at one moment when the myth of the "band guy" took shape.

"I predicted the pandemic wouldn't change live music," says Rio Sakairi, Artistic Director for the NYC jazz club. "And it hasn't."

WBGO's Nate Chinen reflects on the year in jazz.

Harmony Holiday believes the best jazz of 2021 reclaimed a spiritual genius, after what seems like decades of efforts to anesthetize it.

Nostalgia tends to dominate our respective listening habits. This year saw the excavation of various titles from the annals of time.