Singers & Singing

A few years ago, pianist Renee Rosnes organized a jazz band featuring six female musicians sometimes joined by a singer. These jazz all-stars are in alignment on Artemis' self-titled new album.

Baranski started her career in theater and now stars as a progressive lawyer in The Good Fight. "I was a passionate acting student and nothing was going to stop me," the Emmy Award-winning actor says.

DeMent describes herself as extremely shy, but says, "when the songs started coming to me, I felt I didn't have the option to hide and avoid" the stage. Originally broadcast in 2015.

Rachael & Vilray first met in 2003 when they were students at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, but didn't begin performing together until 2015. Now they are the duo Rachael & Vilray and they play original songs inspired by the music of the 1930s and 40s. They'll talk and sing in the studio.

Julie Andrews and her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton have written over 30 children's books together. Now they've collaborated on a new memoir about Julie Andrews' Hollywood years, which began when she was invited to Disney studios to play Mary Poppins.

Counter tenor Anthony Ross Costanzo sings in what's considered a woman's range - in the range of the castrati, men who maintained their high voices by being castrated before puberty. He's about to star in the Philip Glass opera 'Akhenaten.'

Emily Blunt talks about portraying Mary Poppins: getting the accent right, singing, and being suspended from a wire to simulate flying.

Bradley Cooper talks about making a new version of the film 'A Star is Born.' Bradley also starred in it opposite Lady Gaga. This is the fourth version, one other version starred Judy Garland and James Mason.

Whitfield, who died Feb. 9, started in the San Francisco Opera in the 1970s before moving on to piano bars. She later performed regularly at New York's Algonquin Hotel. Originally broadcast in 1988.

Cook, who starred in Broadway shows like The Music Man and Candide, died on Tuesday. She spoke to Fresh Air in 2016 about her struggle with addiction and her second career as a cabaret singer.

Merle Streep sings badly in the new film Florence Foster Jenkins, based on a NYC heiress and arts patron who performed arias and art songs totally off key, but made recordings and performed at Carnegie Hall. Streep is actually a very good singer which she's shown in previous films.

After starring in Broadway shows like The Music Man and Candide, Cook struggled with addiction, then staged a successful second career as a cabaret singer. Her new memoir is Then and Now.

"The Empress of the Blues" gave voice the listeners' tribulations and yearnings of the 1920s and '30s. A new 10-CD box set collects the complete works of the colossus who straddled jazz and blues.

Spektor spent the first nine years of her life in the Soviet Union, where she and her family faced discrimination as Jews. She talks about Russia and her new album, What We Saw From the Cheap Seats, with Terry Gross.

In 2003, Donna Summer appeared on Fresh Air to talk about her memoir, Ordinary Girl, her hit Love to Love You Baby and her collaborator, record producer Giorgio Moroder. We remember Summer -- who died Thursday at the age of 63 -- with excerpts from that interview.

The standards singer's new solo album, Strictly Romancin', explores the ups and downs of love. Russell sings several tracks from the record during this interview and performance.

Meryl Streep won a Golden Globe for her performance as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. She talks about preparing for that role, her other films and how her perceptions of herself have changed over the years.

Etta James, the legendary vocalist who is perhaps known for her version of the song "At Last," has died. She was 73. Fresh Air remembers the singer with excerpts from a 1994 interview about her lengthy career.

The darkness of Tom Waits' lyrics is accentuated by the rumble and rasp of his voice, which sounded old even when he was young. On Bad As Me, Waits reflects on loneliness, life, death and heartbreak. Here, he talks to Terry Gross about performing, being a father and writing his haunting melodies.

MacFarlane is best known for creating the animated TV shows Family Guy, American Dad! and The Cleveland Show. But he's also a singer whose new album features songs from the Great American Songbook.