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A performer who's always managed to dodge easy trends, Will Hoge plays sharp, smart, passionate rock 'n' roll that seems to exist out of time. The Nashville singer-songwriter invests his songs, as heard on his new album The Man Who Killed Love, with a working-class feel and universal appeal. Hear Hoge perform live in concert from WXPN and World Cafe Live in Philadelphia, along with another down-to-earth rocker, Langhorne Slim.

Hear the New Orleans-based zydeco crossover band perform a session on World Cafe.

Dafnis Prieto came to New York from Cuba more than a decade ago. He needed very little time to scare the pants off most drummers in jazz and Afro-Cuban music. In a session from WBGO, Prieto superimposes the clave over the role of each member of the Si O Si Quartet.

Once upon a time, an NPR Music series called JazzSet With Branford Marsalis visited clubs, concerts and festivals across the country and around the world. Today, our founding host runs his own record label, and JazzSet visits the Marsalis Music Stage at Newport, where Chilean-born Claudia Acuna sets political folk songs to the sounds of jazz.

When Ran Blake closes his eyes to interpret a soundtrack, it's as if the classic film The Spiral Staircase plays against his eyelids. His unusual approach to piano playing combines modern and classical harmonies, folk and church music and jazz. On Driftwoods, he interprets his favorite vocalists.

The songs "And Then You're Gone" and "But Now I'm Back" began as one, with a little help from Franz Schubert. With some ingenious songwriting and a little help from NPR's Ari Shapiro, together the songs tell the tale of a love lost — and perhaps won again.

Hip-hop aficionados will recognize "Mystic Brew" as the source material for A Tribe Called Quest's "Electric Relaxation," in which Ali Shaheed Muhammad exhumed Ronnie Foster's then-obscure 1972 soul-jazz tune. In "Mystic Brew (Trixation Version)," pianist Vijay Iyer at once returns the song to its jazz roots and infuses it with modernity.

Combining pop, jazz, soul and country, Jones sold more than 20 million copies of her debut album, Come Away With Me, which won six Grammy Awards. Hear Jones play songs from her new album, The Fall, in a session from World Cafe.

Few sounds get under the skin quite as readily as that of bare hands plucking nylon strings. Gismonti and his son make listeners feel the sensuousness of every note. Their palette of sounds and ideas is so varied that the music is impossible to classify. This session features some of the most exciting guitar playing you're likely to hear all year.

Join a sold-out crowd at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater in Washington, D.C., to experience the piano artistry of a true jazz genius, Kenny Barron. The performance was recorded live on Oct. 2, 2009.