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Jazz musicians today find profound inspiration in a lot of different places, from Chicago to rural Louisiana prisons, and from old standards to biology class. Hear new music from Howard Wiley, Rebecca Martin, Henry Threadgill and the band Herculaneum.

The young violinist's new record contains an unusual pairing of two concertos -- one warhorse and one freshly minted. They may seem like unlikely bedfellows, but the works have more in common than one might think. Hear the album in its entirety until Sept. 23.

For more than half a century, jazz musicians have collaborated with Indian classical musicians with frequently remarkable results. From Ravi Shankar and Bud Shank to Don Cherry's Codona, here are five works that engage jazz improvisation and Indian ragas.

Dizzy Gillespie wasn't content to stick with music people could dance to. The jazz trumpeter had more complex melodies, harmonies and rhythms in mind.

He says he'd rather pick other artists' records, but we pinned Simon Rattle down to choose five of his own favorites made over a fruitful three decades at EMI Classics.

The Kronos Quartet's latest cross-cultural exploration finds the band collaborating with master musicians from Afghanistan and Azerbaijan. Hear a myriad of fascinating Central Asian sounds on Rainbow, in its entirety, a week prior to its release.

Over the course of his life, Nat King Cole became a jazz innovator and an icon of American popular music. Take Five celebrates Cole's birthday — he was born on March 17, 1919 — with a "five-tool" (that's baseball lingo, we'll explain) approach, highlighting the breadth of his work.

This year, the 10 best blues albums feature many younger artists who play original music; their work is rooted in the blues but headed somewhere else. Some purists may be put off, but this is a fascinating moment, in which the music is evolving right in front of us. It's also a demonstration of how deeply blues has become embedded in our culture.

On the surface, there might seem to be a world of difference between jazz and bluegrass music. Jazz is predominantly urban and often deals with relatively complex structures, chords and key changes. Bluegrass is predominantly rural and, like blues, often works within fairly predictable structural boundaries. But jazz and bluegrass are more alike than they appear.

Summer is a time for family gatherings, and over the years, there have been some very notable families of jazz musicians. Hear five songs by some of those talented families — songs selected to accompany your own family's backyard cookout.