Music

EMI has just reissued a broad spectrum of German conductor Otto Klemperer's recordings, including a box set of one of the composers he's most associated with: Gustav Mahler.

A new album from Cowboy Jack Clement has the prolific producer performing many of his best-known compositions with help of Emmylou Harris, Buddy Miller, Rodney Crowell and John Prine.

Womack sang for a gospel group with his brothers called the Valentinos. It's All Over Now was their first international hit. Womack, who died June 27 at the age of 70, talked with Terry Gross in 1999.

Fred Hersch pulls together jazz piano traditions that have little in common. Kevin Whitehead says the classic piano, bass and drums trio format suits Hersch best of all in a review of Floating.

Fresh Air critic Ken Tucker says Lauderdale's career is at once admirable and somewhat puzzling.

The brass players' debut album is a set of pieces by Seattle-based composer and improviser Wayne Horvitz.

Keira Knightley plays a heartbroken singer-songwriter who teams up with a drunken producer in Begin Again. Irish director John Carney, who had a surprise hit with the musical Once, hit his mark again.

If you're going to be downbeat, glum, or morose, it's best to do it the way Timothy Showalter does it.

Lana Del Rey continues a time-honored pop tradition of developing a public persona that challenges fans to decide what's real and what's not.

Trouble & Love is about a relationship that went bad. "I think that this is one where Mary finally gets the lesson," Gauthier tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

Jazz pianist, bandleader and composer Horace Silver died Wednesday at age 85. Fresh Air critic Kevin Whitehead says that Silver had been off the scene awhile, but his influence is as strong as ever. Hear an appreciation.

Famed jazz pianist Horace Silver died yesterday. He spoke with Terry Gross in 1984.

Two fine albums by drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson and the Decoding Society, Man Dance and its sequel Barbeque Dog, are now available again as downloads, after being out of print for ages. Fresh Air critic Kevin Whitehead says they're prime examples of the 1980s' so-called "free-funk" movement.

Parquet Courts is a Brooklyn by way of Texas band that has just released its new third record, Sunbathing Animal. The quartet has drawn comparisons to New York rock and punk acts as various as the Velvet Underground, the New York Dolls, and Sonic Youth, but rock critic Ken Tucker says this album proves Parquet Courts is an original.

Dave and Phil Alvin have made their first full album together in nearly 30 years, a tribute to one of their early influences. "His persona was so big to me," Phil Alvin tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

Platinum continues Miranda Lambert's ongoing project to create songs about women who are complex, fun-loving, and assertive.

The New York City band Golem describes its music as punk-klezmer. On Tanz, they mange to find new ways to balance urban irreverence with folk tradition.

Songs feels like the work of an artist who's still figuring out who he is, where he wants to go, and what he wants to elaborate upon — or invent anew.

Rosenthal has played George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" solo and with symphonic and jazz orchestras. Now he's recorded a version for jazz trio as part of an all-Gershwin album.

The black singing cowboy Herb Jeffries sang a Duke Ellington hit and appeared in 1930s westerns like Harlem Rides the Range and The Bronze Buckaroo.