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The intrepid champions of new music from around the world bring a lullaby, some rare blues and a recent work by The National's Bryce Dessner to the offices of NPR Music.

Polish pianist Slawomir Zubrzycki has brought one of Leonardo da Vinci's lesser-known inventions to life. He spent almost four years building the "viola organista" — a unique musical instrument that looks like a piano but sounds like a quartet of string instruments.

Host Rachel Martin is joined by pianist Batiste and his band, who hope to make jazz transcend genres and generations, as they play live at NPR's headquarters.

On WQXR's Conducting Business podcast, we debate what makes for a really great holiday album. Is it oversized brass fanfares and choirs? Or cozy songs that you'd like to think were recorded beside a crackling fire?

A linchpin of "cool" jazz in the 1950s and '60s, he assembled bands that came to be described as chamber jazz, full of unusual textures and future star talent. Hamilton, who continued performing into his ninth decade, was 92.

If you simplified the last 100 years of music as a war between atonal and lyrical forces, Penderecki would be on the front lines of battle. Discover the great Polish composer's haunting, viscerally dramatic music in a Penderecki primer.

Jazz bassist and composer Ben Allison looks back on an era when sci-fi sounds began infiltrating popular music, and discusses his new album, The Stars Look Very Different Today.

The 26-year-old classically trained pianist tackles Rachmaninov's dense and intimidating "Concerto No. 3" in a new recording. The musician says she hears a connection between the challenging piece and improvisations from the late Art Tatum.

The honey-voiced singer, bandleader, songwriter, and impresario Tabu Ley Rochereau ruled dance floors across Africa. He died in Belgium Saturday.

In 1986, the iconic jazz pianist experimented with drums, bass and electric guitar in his home studio. Decades later, he's finally released the tapes. Reviewer Banning Eyre says that on No End, Jarrett seems to cherish rediscovering a side of his younger self.