Jazz

This Boston band has a long history with Ethiopian music. Now, leader Russ Gershon has composed an Ethiopian opus. His new work embeds Ethiopian melodies in a jazz suite with room to improvise. There's added excitement from Either/Orchestra's Afro-Cuban rhythm section. It sounds like a lot, but every note is there for a reason, as Gershon explains.

They're married but don't have much time to rehearse together. So when Bill and Renee play, "...it clicks! There's a warmth there," as Rosnes told NPR in a double interview. Double Portrait is their album and you can hear highlights from one recent night, two concerts, in the Family Theater on WICN 90.5 this Friday, October 12 at 6PM.

Catherine Russell is a lady born to music. Her father, Luis Russell (1902-63), was Louis Armstrong's orchestra leader beginning in the mid-1930s. Her mother, Carline Ray, is a bassist, singer, great all-around musician and a member of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, the 1940s all-woman band that swung as hard as the men. "This Daughter of Jazz Is One Cool Cat," reads the headline of Nat Hentoff's profile for The Wall Street Journal.

Voice actor/singer Rachael MacFarlane discusses her role as “Haley” on “American Dad” and other characters on “Family Guy”, working with her brother Seth, and her debut jazz CD “Haley Sings”, celebrating her character’s (and her own) love for jazz..

Jason Moran is one of the most talked-about pianists and composers of the past decade. In 2010, he was made a MacArthur Fellow and is now the top jazz adviser for the Kennedy Center, picking up where Dr. Billy Taylor left off. Moran opens this session with a song from his latest album, Ten, called "Blue Blocks" — a commission by the Philadelphia Museum of Art for an exhibition of quilts from Gee's Bend, Ala. The way Moran describes the quilts to host Jon Weber sounds very much like Moran's own music.