Music

Making new sounds while staying mindful of the past is a common theme in the Fresh Air music critic's year-end list.

Fresh Air jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews three box sets featuring memorable pianists: the Chick Corea Trio's Trilogy, Herbie Hancock's Warner Bros. Years (1969-1972), and The Rosemary Clooney CBS Radio Recordings 1955

Fresh Air jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews two reissues featuring the late soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy — a live recording of a 1963 quartet that only played Thelonious Monk tunes, and later music for solo soprano. Monk was always Lacy's biggest influence.

Fresh Air jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews three jazz books out this holiday season—a singer's biography, a pianist's autobiography, and a fat coffee table book. Whitehead says they're all worth a look, though he has a couple of quibbles — and also a confession.

It's not too early to be releasing Christmas albums, and Fresh Air rock critic Ken Tucker has been listening to a lot of them.

A batch of lyrics that Bob Dylan wrote in the late 1960s were given by Dylan to producer T-Bone Burnett, who came up with the idea to have some contemporary musicians set the words to music.

The Boston jazz guitarist tackles the Rite of Spring and Quartet for the End of Time on a pair of new CDs.

During a hiatus, some tapes surfaced of new songs Bob Dylan had been writing: the Basement Tapes. These songs have been collected in a box set.

Womack, who had the hit "I Hope You Dance," hasn't released a new album since 2008. The sound of her new album The Way I'm Livin' is different from the country music dominating the industry.

Taylor Swift's fifth album is called 1989, the year she was born. For the past few years, she's been the young queen of country music, by far its biggest-selling artist. But 1989 sidesteps country music entirely to become Swift's first pure pop album. Fresh Air rock critic Ken Tucker has a review