Latest Jazz from NPR Music

Charles Lloyd has a way of talking that sounds a lot like the notes from his saxophone: full of youthful energy, yet packed with experiences reserved for grownups.

On this episode, Piano Jazz presents a special session with legendary vocalist Linda Ronstadt and pianist-arranger Alan Broadbent, recorded live at Mechanics Hall in Worcester, Mass.

Ronstadt was born July 15, 1946, outside Tuscon, Arizona. She recalls that her family was always singing and playing music together, though none were professional musicians.

As a child, singer Catherine Russell bounced on the knee of Louis Armstrong. Her father, Luis Russell, held the position of musical director for Armstrong, and her mother, Carline Ray, was trained at Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music. It was only natural that Russell would choose a musical path for her own life.

Japanese pianist Hiromi approached the making of her latest album with a love for all kinds of sound, no matter how quotidian.

"Even a car honk, I love it," Hiromi says. "Sometimes, when you are at the crossing point of the street, you hear different car honks at the same time and you hear amazing chords."

She says there's one particular sound from daily life that she could never warm up to, however, even though she depends on it to wake up: the chime of an alarm clock.

Stacy Rowles once wrote a note to her father, pianist and composer Jimmy Rowles, stating: "Dear Dad, if you buy me a flugelhorn, I'll play the [expletive] out of it." Indeed she did, and she picked up singing, as well. A longtime mainstay on the Los Angeles jazz scene, Rowles worked with the all-female quintet the Jazzbirds, led by the late multi-instrumentalist Betty O'Hara, as well as the Jazz Tap Ensemble and the DIVA Big Band.

Recently, host Marian McPartland remembered this 2001 session with Rowles.

If you've put an ear to some of the most talked-about jazz bands of the last few years, you've likely heard saxophonist Walter Smith III.

Boston-based R&B singer-songwriter Jesse Dee has opened for concerts by soul legends Etta James and Al Green, among others. Released last month, his debut album On My Mind, In My Heart is an energetic collection of funky, feel-good grooves.