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Ever since the new "Queen of Blues" made her debut at age 19, she's been working to re-create the blues for a new generation. On Copeland's latest release, Never Going Back, she incorporates pop and jazz into her soulful singing, which conveys a message of inspiration and empowerment for the modern woman.

The pianist for the BMI/New York Jazz Composers Orchestra is also a singer and a former musical director at an Episcopal church. Her latest studio album elaborates on familiar jazz forms while embracing sacred texts, including a piece for Easter vespers.

Drummer Matt Wilson calls his quartet Arts and Crafts because it makes music from scratch. From his "Scenic Route" to bassist Martin Wind's "Cruise Blues" (music for the trip of life) to Carl Sandburg's "Bubbles," this band keeps it musical and fun.

The California native found his way from West Coast beaches to the swamps of New Orleans to perfect his soulful, '70s-style blues-rock. Lindell draws on his travels around the country to infuse his new album, Gulf Coast Highway, with funky grooves, touches of soul and a bit of honky-tonk.

New Orleans is not only the cradle of jazz. It's also the birthplace of great jazz piano, dating back to the early 1900s, when Jelly Roll Morton tickled the ivories. Hear three pianists who are keeping upholding that great tradition — Allen Toussaint, Henry Butler and Jon Cleary — onstage at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., with Keys to New Orleans.

World-renowned trumpet visionary Jon Hassell composes what he calls Fourth World music. It's an innovative sound that melds various ethnic styles, particularly African and Asian, with electronic techniques. On World Cafe, his band performs three songs from his new album in a session with host David Dye.

A Love Supreme, by John Coltrane and his powerful quartet, remains a towering and seemingly untouchable jazz classic. But the virtuosic genre-benders in the Turtle Island Quartet have done it justice, re-working the seminal album for strings and winning a Grammy for their trouble. They perform a live version on this week's JazzSet.

On this edition of All Songs Considered Sonic Youth,Bat For Lashes, Mamer, Marianne Dissard, Mulatu Astatke and Heliocentrics, and Manchester Orchestra.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of Blue Note Records, whose roster once included heavyweights Thelonious Monk and Horace Silver. Singers were a rarity, but Sheila Jordan has outlasted them all.

Conductor Robert Spano leads the orchestra and chorus in Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, music written for the 1962 rededication of the cathedral in Coventry, England, destroyed in a 1940 air raid.