WRTI Picks from NPR Music

Top ten deaths to listen to before you jazz, Blue Note's branding and Marian on Mary Lou. Plus, Dave Liebman recalls his former employer, Miles Davis; 51 gateway albums; Ambrose Akinmusire drops some knowledge; four bloggers on blogging; Dave Holland at large and LCD Soundsystem meets trumpet.

Vänskä pleads for both sides to work together in Minnesota, Muti declines to make a statement and a monocled (!) tenor signs to DG: the stories you must know and a guide to all the news that's fit to link. And a composer exols the durability of the orchestra and the versatility of scissors.

For over 30 years, William Basinski has worked with tape loops. A stunning vinyl box set collects his best-known work, The Disintegration Loops, a project he finished the morning of September 11 while living in New York, and that Basinski says saved his life.

Stephen Spielberg's new movie Lincoln features the authentic sounds of 1865, from Lincoln's own pocket watch to the latch on the carriage door that carried him to Ford's Theatre. Sound designer Ben Burtt talks about making the objects of Lincoln's life heard.

Christopher Walken, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener keep trying to make beautiful music together in 'A Late Quartet,' a new film about the struggles of a veteran chamber group. Beethoven supplies the soundtrack and a prism for splitting the strands of relationships and mortality.

Yirga finds his way into Ethiopian standards, displays his flair for jazz over solo and ensemble pieces, and performs effortless homages to vintage soul. He holds everything together with voracious talent that helps him savor each musical flavor.

The composer, who was born in 1908 and won two Pulitzer Prizes for music that could be challenging and adventurously modern, died in New York.

The studio of Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Music Director Marin Alsop was hit by Hurricane Sandy. When she conducts some water-damaged scores in the future, she'll have wrinkled reminders of the fragility of life and the redemptive power of music.

Today, institutions of higher learning — high schools, summer camps and university-level programs — are an industry unto themselves, dominating formal jazz pedagogy. But before they arrived, many creative individuals had plenty of reasons to seek them out.

Terrorism, worrying about China and immigration from Mexico — these sound like topics for Obama vs. Romney, but these pressing political issues have also found their way into today's opera houses. Watch excerpts from five contemporary operas that grapple with these hot potatoes head-on.