NPR Staff

The talk-show host and former presidential candidate also plays bass in a rock group. But he says his tastes were more shaped by the big-band jazz his parents played.

The tenor's musical tastes aren't confined to Puccini, Bizet and Strauss. His new, self-titled album gives him a chance to put his mark on everything from American spirituals to Top 40 hits.

"To chant, to sing, engages one's whole being," says Brother Christian Leisy of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert. The Benedictine monks who live outside Santa Fe have released an album of Gregorian chant.

The legendary brass group has been pleasing crowds for decades with a repertoire that mixes classic and modern compositions with Dixieland, jazz and Broadway. Tuba player and founding member Chuck Daellenbach says the band brings a playful approach to its stage show to build an audience for brass.

A new star out of the El Sistema program says that her goal in playing Chopin is valuing honesty over prettiness.

Retired Air Force bugler Jari Villanueva gives us a glimpse of the fascinating history behind these 24 somber notes.

On his new album, Saltarello, the adventurousviolist creates surprising musical juxtapositions.

The Cuban trumpeter first met Dizzy Gillespie in 1977, when the American jazzman came to Havana to play a concert. It was the start of a friendship that would last until Gillespie's death in 1993.

Wallace Hartley left work as a bank teller to become a conductor. He spent his final moments on the deck of the Titanic, leading the ship's seven musicians in song as they sank into the North Atlantic.

Some rare recordings by the jazz guitarist have come to light and can now be heard on the compilation Echoes of Indiana Avenue. Susan Stamberg speaks with NPR editor and guitar expert Tom Cole about the trove.