Music

Hal David, the Oscar- and Grammy-winning lyricist, died Saturday in Los Angeles. He was 91. David is best known for his many collaborations with composer Burt Bacharach between the late '50s and the mid-'70s.

Street Corner Symphonies is a 15-volume year-by-year survey of doo-wop by scholar Bill Dahl.

Despite its title, When I'm President isn't as political as Hunter's past couple of solo albums. Critic Ken Tucker says Hunter reachers back into rock's past while linking it firmly to the present.

Julio Cortazar's book Rayuela is expansive, smart, breezy, romantic and occasionally reminiscent of a disturbing dream. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead says that Miguel Zenon and Laurent Coq's Rayuela-inspired album lands on all those squares.

The members of Shoes have cobbled together albums like stubborn craftsmen who know that their trade is at once outmoded and valuable. Ken Tucker says Ignition retains the same pop-rock rigor heard in the band's 1970s records.

There are lots of stories about the band that got away. For rock historian Ed Ward, one of those groups has always been Autosalvage, a New York quartet who made one album and then stopped playing.

Garbarek helped the ECM label find its emerging voice 40 years ago. A new box set of early albums captures the saxophonist's forming sound — austere and astringent.

Listen to an in-studio concert and conversation with the Canadian singer and her longtime guitarist, Jordan Officer.

Ken Tucker says the Black Keys member works wonders producing JEFF The Brotherhood and Hacienda.

Scholar and fan Ryan Truesdell has turned unheard Evans scores into richly textured works.

The various music styles of Eastern Europe's Roma people, formerly known as gypsies, have become favorites with audiences around the world. Milo Miles says no group does a better job of blending tradition with innovation than the ensemble led by Boban Markovic and his son Marko.

The prolific, and often risqué, crooner's 14th album explores sounds from earlier eras with surprising restraint.

Ocean has written songs for Beyonce, Justin Beiber and John Legend; last year, his mixtape Nostalgia Ultra attracted mainstream attention. Now, Ocean has released his first major-label album, Channel Orange. Rock critic Ken Tucker has a review of Ocean's album and career thus far.

Davis' bluesy alto sax rasp is straight out of Charlie Parker's playbook, but he makes it his own in a new live recording from the Smalls Jazz Club.

The jazz musician didn't make his burden any lighter by choosing to play tenor and soprano saxophones -- the same instruments his father, John Coltrane, indelibly stamped. But critic Kevin Whitehead says he speaks in his own voice on the album Spirit Fiction.

Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, is celebrating its 75th anniversary. To celebrate, the BSO is streaming a different historic Tanglewood concert on its website every day for 75 days.

The legendary folksinger wrote hundreds of political songs, children's tunes an ballads, including "This Land Is Your Land," "Pastures of Plenty" and "Pretty Boy Floyd." Many of his tracks appear on a new CD box set released by Smithsonian Folkways.

Bach's oratorio The St. Matthew Passion has been called the Mount Everest of Western classical music. For some three and a half hours, it tells the story of Jesus' last days, based on the Gospel of St. Matthew. A new DVD deals with this monumental work in an original way.

A Southern hip-hop artist, Big K.R.I.T. recently released his major-label debut, titled Live From the Underground. Rock critic Ken Tucker says the album takes the audience through K.R.I.T.'s own version of Southern history.