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The daughter of famed jazz journalist and producer Leonard Feather first tried to make a career as a stage actress. That's when she started to translate her minor aggravations into song lyrics — and singing them.

In the 1960s, the renegade saxophonist took children's songs, march melodies and gospel hymns and made them into powerful free improvisations. Now, he's being embraced by a generation of rock fans — and explored in a recent documentary.

Whether outdoors in New York with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band or inside Orchestra Hall in Chicago at the Big River Concert, the Crescent City ambassadors keep the city's beat alive. With a banjo player in both camps, this show is divided between traditional and modern music.

Chestnut is a musical agent of sweet and serious soul. JazzSet celebrates Martin Luther King Day with a concert from the pianist, his quintet and vocalist Cynthia Scott at the Kennedy Center. The group performs a spiritual, hymns and gospel songs.

He grew up with John Coltrane, gigged with Art Blakey and shared the silver screen with Tom Hanks. Now, on the eve of 80, illustrious saxophonist and jazz composer Benny Golson is re-creating his greatest ensemble: the six-person Jazztet.

The avant-garde improviser used to joke: "I do country music; it's just a matter of what country." Now on his first North American tour in more than two decades, he describes his atmospheric electronics and soft, subtle trumpet style.

The Fifth Annual Portland Jazz Festival celebrated "The Shape of Jazz to Come" with jazzart-rock trio The Bad Plus and the Spanish Harlem Orchestra, both playing to full houses at the historic, slightly psychedelic McMenamin's Crystal Ballroom in Portland, OR.

A ghostly bass plucks out notes that tremble with foreboding. A Steinway piano injects haunting, minor-key arpeggios. A woman chimes in, her voice seemingly filtered through gauze. It's natural to expect a song of apocalyptic doom, until it becomes clear that she's crooning "How Deep Is Your Love," that falsetto-fueled Bee Gees relic from the disco era.

Pizzarelli is known as one of jazz's great chord soloists, as well as an extraordinary rhythm player. Now 83, Pizzarelli was recently honored by the New York Public Library as one of its speakers at the "Duke Jazz Talks," an interview series in which he performed with his son, John Pizzarelli.

She's best known for her original songwriting, but her cool, insinuating delivery is perfect for classics, too. She visits NPR's Studio 4A for a performance from her latest album, The Cole Porter Mix — plus a certain Valentine's Day standard.