Music

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews And now... The Revolutionary Ensemble. The three-man group uses instruments ranging from violin and harmonica to acoustic bass and a wide range of percussion.

Cake has five albums to their credit. The band includes trumpeter Vincent DiFiore, bassist Gabriel Nelson, and guitarist Xan McCurdy. The popular alt-rock group combines caustic lyrics with pulsing guitar music and is influenced by many different styles: rock, funk, synth-pop, mariachi and cuban. Sometimes they shoot for a cheap, lo-fi sound, says McCrea. Their new CD is Pressure Chief.

Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews The Callas Conversations on DVD and Maria Callas: Legend, a CD and DVD.

Get Lifted is the first solo album by R&B singer and piano player John Legend, who made his name playing with star producer Kanye West. Rock critic Ken Tucker has a review.

Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews two new albums of Handel arias by opera singers Renee Fleming and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (on the Universal and Avie labels).

Ed Ward reviews Goodbye, Babylon, a six-CD anthology that culls strange, rare and fiery finds of American gospel and other religious music from the early 20th century. The box set is produced by maverick label Dust-to-Digital.

Before he played guitar for Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page was a session musician in London studios. Rock historian Ed Ward looks back at Page's early career. Led Zeppelin will be honored with a Lifetime Achievement Grammy next month.

Bandleader and clarinetist Artie Shaw died Dec. 29 at the age of 94, apparently of natural causes. In the 1930s and '40s, Shaw's band ranked with the Goodman, Dorsey and Miller bands in popularity. But he largely rejected pop tunes and stuck with music by composers like Porter, Gershwin and Berlin. We remember Shaw.

We rebroadcast a tribute to the great vocalist and composer Thomas "Fats" Waller from May 19, 2004. Guitarist and singer Marty Grosz and cornet player Randy Reinhart join us for a special in-studio performance in honor of Waller's 100th birthday. Waller wrote many hit songs, appeared in films in the 1930s and '40s, and wrote Broadway musicals.

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews Careless Love, the CD from singer Madeleine Peyroux.

The multi-talented Mos Def plays a police officer in the new indie film The Woodsman, also starring Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, about a pedophile who moves into a suburban neighborhood. He also has a new rap album, The New Danger. Mos Def has appeared in the films Bamboozled, Monster's Ball, and Brown Sugar. He made his Broadway debut with the play Topdog/Underdog, and has also won an Obie Award. Mos Def will be in the upcoming films A Confederacy of Dunces and A Hitchhiker s Guide to the Galaxy.

The new book Living With Jazz: A Reader, is the first collection of Dan Morgenstern's writing, including liner notes, record and concert reviews, critical essays and other writings. Morgenstern has been on the jazz scene for more than 40 years, from his earliest days as an editor of the jazz magazine Down Beat. Since 1976, he has been the director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University in Newark, N.J. The institute is billed as the largest collection of jazz-related materials anywhere. Morgenstern has won four Grammy Awardss for liner notes.

Music critic Ken Tucker gives us his top picks in pop for 2004. He runs down his 10 best albums, and then talks about some trends of 2004, such as the return of punk, the year of the hip-hop producer, crunk music, and the potential end of an era as iPods and single song downloads replace album purchases.

Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews the new self-titled solo CD by singer-songwriter John Davis, formerly with the punk-pop group Superdrag.

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews the new box set Albert Ayler: Holy Ghost, celebrating the saxophonist and composer. Through renewed interest — and a string of reissues — Ayler has grown increasingly influential and appreciated in recent years.

Director John Waters, known for making art from sleaze, has a new CD for the season, A John Waters Christmas. It includes such songs as "Here Comes Fatty Claus," "Little Mary Christmas," and "Santa Claus is a Black Man." Waters was once crowned the "Pope of Trash" by William Burroughs.

Rock historian Ed Ward reviews Bob Dylan's new autobiography, Chronicles, Vol. I.

Apart from being the guitarist for Bruce Springsteen and playing mob guy Silvio on The Sopranos, Steven Van Zandt is also a radio DJ. We talk with Van Zandt about creating the music for the new movie Christmas with the Kranks.