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Pianist Hazel Scott was one of the few artists who successfully integrated jazz and classical music. For 1955's Relaxed Piano Sounds, Scott teamed with the two men who owned Debut Records — drummer Max Roach and bassist Charles Mingus — for one of the best piano trios ever recorded.

Music critic Milo Miles reviews new collections of Bollywood film music: Bollywood for Beginners, The Best of Bollywood, 15 Classic Hits from the Indian Cinema, and The Very Best of Bollywood Songs II.

George Shearing is perhaps best known as the inventor of a unique quintet sound that combined piano, vibraphone, electric guitar, bass, and drums. He also influenced the development of small-combo Afro-Cuban jazz. This album focuses on Shearing's MGM period, when he was at the height of his popularity.

Since Anita O'Day made her solo debut in the 1940s, she has been charming listeners with her dynamic incorporation of bop modernism into vocals. Her raspy voice, which inspired a string of followers, is showcased on 1957's Pick Yourself Up with Anita O'Day.

Swedish-American Cal Tjader is ironically one of the icons of Afro-Cuban jazz. The versatile vibraphonist successfully navigated the worlds of both Latin jazz and mainstream bop, influencing Carlos Santana and other artists. This album was recorded at the 1959 Monterey Jazz Festival.

Bessie Smith became known as "the empress of the blues" in the 1920s, when most vocalists called themselves blues singers. On The Essential Bessie Smith, she shows how her famous voice could captivate a room without the aid of a microphone.

Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews two new albums: a punk-rock-opera by the group Green Day, American Idiot, and Rubber Factory by the group Black Keys.

In 1963, Gerry Mulligan brought an outstanding sextet to the Nola Studios in New York City to create an album that paid homage to the bossa nova and samba craze. The result of their piano-less collaboration was Night Lights, summed up by jazz critic Murray Horwitz as an album in which "Poland meets Brazil."

As jazz critic Murray Horwitz puts it, "Just because a CD is a survey of Christmas music, it doesn't mean that it can't have great music." The all-star lineup of the 1990 album, Jingle Bell Jazz, includes Dexter Gordon, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and Herbie Hancock.

Cellist Anja Lechner and pianist Vassilis Tsabropoulos perform music by Greek Armenian composer G.I. Gurdjieff on a new CD, Chants, Hymns and Dances. The CD also features music composed by Tsabropoulos and interpretations inspired by Byzantine hymns. Hear NPR's Robert Siegel's conversation with Lechner and Tsabropoulos.