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I'm into piano, but it's also my frenemy. When I get frustrated with something I'm trying to learn, we stop talking for months. But then I hear a pop song and my brain leaps to how I would play it.

Over the course of his life, Nat King Cole became a jazz innovator and an icon of American popular music. Take Five celebrates Cole's birthday — he was born on March 17, 1919 — with a "five-tool" (that's baseball lingo, we'll explain) approach, highlighting the breadth of his work.

Hear the acclaimed pianist discuss and spin his favorite Liszt recordings.

One of the beauties of New Orleans piano music is that once you hear it, you'll know it whenever you encounter it again. It's Mardi Gras week in New Orleans, and we're going to join in the celebration with a brief but broad overview of some of the Crescent City's many extraordinary pianists.

Want a great conversation-starter with a fan of Latin jazz? Ask, "What's your favorite pairing of conga and timbales?" Many long-standing percussion duos display seemingly telepathic interplay — the intensity of a runaway train mixed with the kind of swing that makes hips move by themselves. Picking five was a chore, but here they are.

Attempting to make your way into jazz is never easy, but the jazz writer and cultural critic Gary Giddins has rendered it a bit more approachable. His new book, Jazz, is a new guide for novice listeners and longtime fans alike. Giddins picks five songs from his list of 101 entry-way jazz recordings.

Hear the gorgeous voice of a young opera singer with his ears tuned to the great tenors of the past.

Born 100 years ago Saturday, clarinetist Benny Goodman made jazz a listening concern for folks who thought it was only for the clubs. He was not only an innovative musician, but a forward-thinking bandleader, the first to integrate black musicians on stage with a white band.

Hear excerpts from the acclaimed violinist's new 40-CD box set.

The Catalyst Quartet has been all about elevating music previously excluded from the canon — in this case, exceptional string quartets by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, George Walker, and William Grant Still.