The Boston Symphony Orchestra recently returned to its storied summer home, Tanglewood, after the pandemic canceled last season. With reopening comes normalcy, as well as an opportunity for growth.
Ted Gioia first published his History of Jazz in 1997, updating it for the first time in 2011. This year he did so again, after a very important decade for the genre.
Known for its deft handling of canonical classics and contemporary music, the Attacca Quartet breaks new ground on a major-label debut featuring music by Flying Lotus, Squarepusher and other EDM acts.
After nearly three decades spent producing massive hits for a long list of (other) legends including Janet Jackson and Mariah Carey, the pair called in some favors for a long-belated debut.
The theory of nigrescence describes the process of developing a Black identity. Namwali Serpell says it's like falling in love — and for her, it began when she first heard Lauryn Hill's 1998 album.
The Pulitzer-winning, Kanye-collaborating composer began her career with a creative blank check, but she's spent much of the past decade moving sideways. Her latest trick: reinventing as a songwriter.
Pianist Min Kwon asked 70 artists to examine and interpret the patriotic standard on solo piano. "What they have in common is what they want America to sound like," she says.
Decades before Motown, Black Swan Records was the world's first major Black-owned record label. Radio Diaries brings us the story of Harry Pace and the mystery that kept him out of the history books.
Dacus's third album is an intimate collection of snapshots from her youth and teen years. Both searching and empathetic, it channels what it means to revisit the past with the wisdom of distance.
Britney Spears' appearance in Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday points to a broader history of how women in entertainment and the music business have been treated.
NPR's Noel King talks to musician Amythyst Kiah, who deals with tough subjects, like being "othered" as a Black woman on the bluegrass and folk circuit.
A visionary who died young and alone in 1990, Eastman is making a slow but richly deserved comeback thanks to a curious younger generation. A new interpretation of his 1974 work Femenine is out now.
How do we understand Blue in the 21st century? Can we think of Mitchell's 1971 album, long considered the apex of confessional songwriting, as a paradigm not of raw emotion, but of care and craft?
Lincoln Center observes Juneteenth, now a federal holiday, with "I Dream a Dream That Dreams Back at Me," an ambulatory experience conceived by Carl Hancock Rux.
