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A jazz legend's influence on the genre is detailed in Donald Maggin's book Dizzy: The Life and Times of John Birks Gillespie. Dizzy Gillespie's contributions to jazz included the flavor of Afro-Cuban rhythms and be-bop.

While some of the music created in the mid-20th and early 21st centuries has never found an audience, there are contemporary composers who have achieved both critical acclaim and commercial success. Musicologist Richard Taruskin discusses the current era of music.

In 1685, within a period of eight months, three master composers were born: Scarlatti, Handel and Bach. Although each was extremely influential, they worked in very different ways because of their contrasting demands. Richard Taruskin, discusses the divergent paths of these three men.

A new book argues that Motown was a step in the evolution of the American popular song, a tradition reaching back to songwriters like Irving Berlin, George Gershwin and Cole Porter.

The Clash was sometimes called "the only band that mattered." They mashed reggae, R&B, and rockabilly into classic three-chord punk rock. Chris Salewicz's Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer offers an extensive biography into the band's enigmatic frontman.

Ted Libbey has poured his passion for classical music into creating the new NPR Listener's Encyclopedia of Classical Music. With the encyclopedia finally coming out this month, Libbey joins Fred Child to talk about the ambitious project.

Men and women have long made music to accompany their labor, and musician Ted Gioia says that work songs are more than a musical genre, they're a transformational tool. The author of the new book Work Songs, shares some of his favorites with us.

Edmund Morris' new biography details Beethoven's life, from the cities of Bonn and Vienna where he lived into his professional friendships and rivalries with Haydn, Mozart, Goethe and Napoleon Bonaparte. The book also examines his often difficult relationships with his family and explores his ability to transcend his gathering deafness.

In the 1950s, composer William Bolcom began an ambitious project to set the 46 poems in William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience to music. A massive work, the result premiered in 1984. Now, a recording of Bolcom's work has finally been released. NPR's Jeffrey Freymann-Weyr reports.

Singer and pianist Bobby Short has one of the most distinctive voices in the music world, and for 37 years he's been holding court in one of the most distinctive jazz venues around — the Cafe Carlyle in Manhattan. Now 80 years old, he's still going strong, and talks to NPR's Tavis Smiley about his long career.