Marc Cary came to New York City to find and save his father. Instead, he found artists like Betty Carter and Abbey Lincoln — and saved himself.

"I hadn't seen my dad in 10 years," Cary says over a recent lunch in downtown Manhattan. "He's a percussionist, but he was living another lifestyle, and I came to rescue him. He was living at the Port Authority Bus Station."

Cary was 21; he arrived with only $20 in his pocket. But he was also a talented jazz pianist. On the recommendation of a friend, he soon connected with the late Art Taylor, a venerated jazz drummer. Taylor was assembling a new incarnation of the Wailers, his own seminal jazz group.

"I called him that night, and he told me to come over immediately," Cary says. At the time, Taylor lived a block away in Harlem. When Cary arrived, Abbey Lincoln was there; she lived next door. "[Lincoln] checked me out, gave me a lot of encouragement and told me that one day we'll play together."

Cary's latest album, For the Love of Abbey, is his first solo piano recording. It honors his 12-year tenure with the late jazz vocalist, as well as her prowess for writing emotionally arresting lyrics. But he also pays homage to all those who shaped him, notably his family.

Today, his father is a barber. "When I got out of touch with him, I just let my locks grow," says Cary, who wears dreadlocks. "I never let anybody cut my hair but my dad."

Embracing A Heritage

Born in New York City, Cary was raised between Providence, R.I., and Washington, D.C. Cary's mother, Penny Gamble-Williams, is a cellist. Mae York Smith, his great-grandmother, was not only a classical vocalist and concert pianist for silent movies, but also practiced four-handed piano alongside pianist Eubie Blake. And his grandfather, Otis Gamble, was the first cousin of trumpeter Cootie Williams, best known for his work with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

Like his father, Cary played drums as a teenager, working in a go-go band. But at the time, Cary couldn't fully embrace his musical lineage. His personal life was in disarray, and when he was 15, his parents entered him into a rehabilitation program called RAP, Inc., based in D.C.

"I had a whole other life before music," he says. "I was like most kids these days and I had some problems with the law. To keep me from going to jail, they sent me to this program."

RAP brought him into contact with a gifted musician named Daniel Whitt — a man who could listen to a symphony and transcribe the score as it played. "He was [also] an incredible pianist who took his time to show me some very important things about the piano that I didn't know," Cary says. It marked the first time in his life when he imagined himself as a jazz musician.

Betty And Abbey

Years later, Cary got the gig with Art Taylor's Wailers. That brought him into contact with the late jazz vocalist Betty Carter, who was known for her work with emerging jazz musicians. Cary's name came up frequently, and she finally agreed to have him audition for her band. "By the end of the audition, she was asking me if I had my passport," Cary says.

Carter not only helped Cary obtain a passport, but also bought him a suit and brought him on the road for the next six weeks, traveling to a different city every day. When Cary reached the end of his two-and-a-half-year term with Carter, she told him that he was ready to play with the guys now. "She gave me a little envelope, put it in my vest pocket, smacked me on my ass and told me to get on about my business," he says. "Betty's the one who set me up properly as far as the etiquette of being a musician."

Cary's time with Carter also prepared him for working with another legend of jazz singing: Abbey Lincoln. He was reunited with Lincoln while performing at the memorial service for pianist Don Pullen, fulfilling the prophecy she made years ago in Art Taylor's apartment. He worked with Lincoln for a dozen years.

Cary says one of the most important lessons that he learned from Lincoln was to be "live" and in the moment. "There would be some nights when I would let the emotions kind of run me," he says. "I would try to feel each word and put a chord in that went with the emotion." Lincoln's advice was a great relief: It encouraged him to be more present and instinctual musically. "It's just a simple song," Lincoln would say to him. "I'm delivering the lyric, so just give me the thing that I need. Don't be too emotional. Just be there."

He also credits both Carter and Lincoln for giving him the sensitivity that he needed to approach this music. "A lot of times you won't get that from instrumentalists, because they're not dealing with lyric," Cary says. "Both Betty and Abbey taught me everything about how to accompany a vocalist and how to express myself as a soloist."

People In Me

For the Love of Abbey also proved as something of a cathartic release from the loss of the many musicians who have inspired Cary. Lincoln herself died in 2010 at age 80.

Prior to her death, Lincoln was living in a hospice. Due to an impasse on musician visits, it had been a year and a half before Cary was allowed to see her.

"When I walked in the room, I smiled at her," he says. "Abbey said, 'Marc, we got a gig tonight!' I had to tell her that I left my clothes at home and I'll have to go home and get them." Lincoln had not remembered anyone in months. "The fact that she remembered who I was lets me know that I made an impact on her that even dementia couldn't take away."

One of Lincoln's unfulfilled dreams was to create a physical place for musicians called Moseka House. (She was given the name Aminata Moseka during a ceremony in Africa as a guest of the late Miriam Makeba.) "Almost like a monastery, a place where [musicians] can go and be safe; where they can speak about things that they think about," Cary said.

Moseka House had only existed for Lincoln in her mind. Lately, Cary has been thinking about making Moseka House into a reality. "Because she could realize it in her head," he says, "it lives."

We jazz fans tend to filter through a lot of names. For every Sonny Rollins or Wes Montgomery on the cover of an album, there might be two, three, four, five, eight, 14 more musicians backing him or her. Slowly, we begin to string together the works of these sidemen, too: what they're capable of, with whom they recorded, in what circles they appeared to run. Somewhere, we know this isn't the complete story, but sometimes, it's all we have to start thinking of one.

To evaluate the late bassist Ben Tucker on that criterion would reveal some impressive credits. He played bass in Billy Taylor's trio for years. He's on records by Art Pepper and Warne Marsh made in Southern California. He's on dates led by Gerry Mulligan, Grant Green and Quincy Jones made in New York City. The recording log alone reveals every indication of a first-rate player during a fertile period in music.

Look a little further on the credits and you'll see he was a composer, as well. His blues "Comin' Home Baby" was recorded by a jazz group led by drummer Dave Bailey in October 1961; the next month, Tucker was again present when flutist Herbie Mann recorded it live in concert. Mann's version became a hit, but not the Top 40 success that reluctant vocalist Mel Tormé enjoyed when Tucker worked with Bob Dorough to create a lyric for the tune. Among the hundreds of Tucker's songwriting credits, "Comin' Home Baby" remains his biggest commercial success — it was even recently recorded by Michael Bublé.

But Ben Tucker's legacy stretched far beyond annals and listings of personnel, or even jazz clubs. His impact could be felt deeply in fields like broadcasting, music publishing and Saturday-morning television, and in Savannah, Ga., where he lived for his final decades.

Ben Tucker was driving a golf cart when he was struck by an out-of-town driver on Tuesday. He was 82.

Born in 1930, Tucker and his twin brother grew up in Nashville, Tenn., where he taught himself the upright bass and tuba. After attending college and serving four years in the Air Force, he took to the Los Angeles area, and then New York City, where he found his way into the jazz community.

But Tucker didn't just play bass. He and Bob Dorough formed a production company to make television commercials. In the early 1970s, an advertising executive whose son was having trouble learning arithmetic asked Tucker and Dorough to set multiplication tables to music. The result was the pilot episode of what would later become Schoolhouse Rock!, the three-minute animated interstitials between educational and kids programming.

Tucker also learned the publishing business. Not long after meeting the singer-songwriter Bobby Hebb, Tucker helped him record the song "Sunny," which became a hit. Royalties from "Sunny" allowed Tucker to pursue future business opportunities.

Like his colleague Billy Taylor, Tucker took an interest in broadcasting. In 1972, Tucker moved to Savannah, Ga. and bought the AM radio station WSOK. As one of a small handful of black radio-station owners in the country, he transformed the station into the top AM station in its market, and gave voice to the city's African-American population. The future mayor of Savannah, Otis Johnson, hosted a program. "I was the voice of the black community," Tucker told the Savannah Morning News in 2006. He later started the FM station WLVH.

But, also like Taylor, Tucker never stopped performing. Among other jazz societies and initiatives to which he contributed, in 1989 Tucker also opened a jazz club in Savannah called Hard-Hearted Hannah's, and played in the house band six nights a week. He was a regular at the Westin hotel in town, where he played the Sunday jazz brunch and played the golf course onsite frequently. He became an icon in the city's music community. From the AP obituary:

"One of the most interesting things about playing with Ben was he was so beloved by so many people in Savannah who had met him at his club or whose weddings he had played," said Howard Paul, a jazz guitarist who played and recorded with Tucker for more than 20 years. "You could count on being interrupted at least three times in a song because Savannahians would walk up and shake his hand while we were playing."

Myself, I only knew Ben Tucker by name, by the two-dimensional credits on album covers. But Ben Tucker had many dimensions that connected him deeply to many communities — and, luckily, he left traces of those stories behind, too.

Mulgrew Miller, whose supple touch and thorough command made him a leading jazz pianist, died early Wednesday. His death was related to a stroke he suffered a week earlier, according to saxophonist David Demsey, coordinator of jazz studies at William Paterson University in Wayne, N.J., where Miller served as director of jazz studies. Miller was 57.

A versatile player, Miller had a style that sparkled with clarity and bounded with soulfulness — a combination that can be heard on more than 500 albums, by his own estimation. His gentle personality and thoughtful mentorship further endeared him to multiple generations of musicians.

"He was a very positive kind of human being," said Steve Wilson, a saxophonist and close associate. "He never had anything negative to say about anyone or anything. ... But the second he sat down at the piano, he was in the zone. Whether he was at soundcheck, or trying to see if the piano was in tune, or at a gig — whenever he played that first note, he was in that zone."

Miller was born in 1955 in Greenwood, Miss. and his father bought him a piano six years later. At 14 he saw Oscar Peterson play on TV and was smitten by jazz. Miller studied at Memphis State University and in Boston, then spent the next two decades as a full-time touring professional. Among his highest-profile associations were with the Duke Ellington Orchestra (under the direction of Mercer Ellington), singer Betty Carter, trumpeter Woody Shaw, drummer Tony Williams and drummer Art Blakey, whose band served as a development academy for star young talent.

Though Miller recorded much more as a sideman than a bandleader, he left behind an estimable solo discography of well over a dozen albums. He released his debut recording in 1985; two years later, he released Wingspan, which shared its name with the band he led off and on. In recent years, Miller also performed frequently with a trio of younger musicians (Rodney Green on drums and Ivan Taylor or Derrick Hodge on bass), and was often spotted with bassist Ron Carter's Golden Striker trio, a drummerless ensemble with guitarist Russell Malone.

Miller was recorded often by the NPR Music program JazzSet, produced by member station WBGO. His trio visited the Kennedy Center in Washington last year, and a Detroit Jazz Festival performance found him leading Wingspan and duetting with fellow pianist Kenny Barron. Before Miller died, he also saluted his colleagues. He can be heard in a JazzSet recording of a tribute to pianist James Williams, whom he knew since his college years in Memphis, and who preceded him as a professor at William Paterson.

Our friends at Deceptive Cadence, NPR Music's classical blog, are celebrating the 100th anniversary of The Rite of Spring all this week. You'd be well-advised to wander on over there and check it out.

When I first heard about their plan, I immediately thought about Charlie Parker. Bird had enormous ears, and occasionally they fell on works of modern classical composers like Igor Stravinsky. In fact, he's been documented quoting passages from The Rite of Spring and other Stravinsky works multiple times.

So I offered to unpack the connection between jazz and the Rite, and in doing so, found deeper links between the Russian-born composer and African-American-born jazz than I had imagined. The full essay is up on Deceptive Cadence now.

I wanted to share one of several little nuggets I couldn't squeeze into the piece. In 1961, another fleet alto saxophonist, Phil Woods, recorded a gem of an album called Rights Of Swing. It's a five-part suite for a tightly-arranged octet, and obviously puns on Stravinsky's radical ballet. Musically speaking, it's hard to discern much of a connection to the Rite itself, but in the final "Presto" section, he does leave an Easter egg for us.

Rights Of Swing features the unusual color of a French horn, staffed ably by Julius Watkins. When Watkins finishes his solo, the band drops out, and he plays a familiar little riff:

Perhaps you've heard that before?

When Duke Ellington received the news that Billy Strayhorn, his songwriting and arranging partner of 28 years, had died, Ellington reportedly cried and told a friend, "No, I'm not all right! Nothing is going to be all right now."

The cancer-stricken Strayhorn passed away on May 31, 1967, and Ellington himself would follow seven years later, dying on May 24, 1974, at the age of 75. But the Duke did not go gently into the good night of his own mortality; he toured incessantly in the last years of his life and produced late-period masterpieces such as The New Orleans Suite and The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse. "Who's 70?" he said to a reporter who kept bringing up his age. "That's an awful weight to put on an up-and-coming man like me."

As his son Mercer Ellington later noted, Duke Ellington took Strayhorn's passing as an impetus, born of necessity, to increase his own productivity as a writer. His discography from 1967 to 1973 contains numerous points of interest, such as The River (written for an Alvin Ailey ballet), a duet date with bassist Ray Brown (This One's for Blanton) and a stellar piano-trio concert (Live at the Whitney). Here are five more glowing snapshots from the Ellingtonian twilight.

Woody Herman was one of the premier bandleaders in jazz, saxophonist Joe Lovano says.

"He didn't have the same chops and virtuosic approach like Benny Goodman or Artie Shaw, but he told a deep story," says Lovano, who played with Herman early in his career. "He was a blues player from his heart, and really had a beautiful voice on alto saxophone."

Born in 1913, Herman would have turned 100 on Thursday. Over the course of a long career, the reedman explored many of the styles of 20th-century jazz, and was one of the first big-band leaders to incorporate melodic lines from bebop.

Herman's bands were generally known as the Herd — later, the Thundering Herd — and featured a tremendous rhythmic drive. His was one of the country's most popular musical acts in the 1940s, and respected enough musically to inspire and introduce an "Ebony Concerto" from Igor Stravinsky. His records from that period remain touchstones and still swing hard. (Well, maybe not the Stravinsky.)

Herman was also an amazing talent scout, giving work to not only countless arrangers, but also an unending roster of strong soloists, including Flip Phillips, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Pete and Conte Candoli, Gene Ammons, Sal Nistico, Frank Tiberi and Dave McKenna.

"He heard all kinds of young players all the time, and was attracted by the modern sounds as different generations developed under him," Lovano says. "He featured cats and let them really be themselves."

Herman performed nearly all of his life. As a child performer on vaudeville, he was known as the Boy Wonder. Later in life, he kept working long after his health started to fail him, as he sought to pay off a never-ending debt to the IRS.

Here are five songs that sound fresh decades down the road, offering just a sample of Woody Herman's many sounds.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has issued a proclamation declaring Friday "Women in Jazz Day" — an attempt at cultural reform that's bound to enjoy the same resounding success as banning oversized sodas. Which is to say: Nice try, Mr. Mayor.

Women in jazz certainly deserve to be celebrated. But trying to persuade arbiters of the jazz canon to make room for women as a fundamental, integral part of our history? You'd have better luck extending term limits again.

The mayoral proclamation was occasioned by the Film Society of Lincoln Center's premiere of The Girls in the Band, a documentary about female jazz instrumentalists from the 1920s to the present. Described by producer and director Judy Chaiken as women's answer to Ken Burns' Jazz (the 19-hour miniseries that only spares a minute or two for the contributions of women instrumentalists), The Girls in the Band has already seen its share of festival screenings and won a few awards. Herbie Hancock, who was interviewed for the film, brushed away tears of joy when he watched it, according to a press release.

The Girls in the Band brought a tear to my eyes, too, but only because I wish it had gone deeper and been afforded a little more polish, offering viewers an experience as vibrant and well-crafted as the music these women made.

Historians won't have trouble nitpicking at the somewhat-jumbled narrative. For example, it doubles back to cover Lil Hardin Armstrong (a 1920s jazz heroine) after WWII. Inevitably, at 81 minutes, it still leaves out very significant players, including vibraphonist Marjorie Hyams, pianist/organist/harpist Alice Coltrane, pianist Marilyn Crispell and violinist Regina Carter. The sound quality is uneven beyond the vagaries that come with re-mastering old media. And uncredited, contemporary musicians blandly fill the gaps between historic gems with piano noodling and knock-offs of "Sing Sing Sing."

My biggest complaint, however, is with the interviews. Whether they're with better-known figures (like pianist Marian McPartland, bandleader Maria Schneider and trumpeter Ingrid Jensen) or more obscure pioneers (like bandleader Peggy Gilbert, trumpeter Clora Bryant and saxophonist Roz Cron), the production often renders them as flat as Mayor Mike's Big Gulp. These are remarkably colorful performers who have a lot to say. I've met most of them and, for the record, they're vastly more engaging than Chaiken's portrait would have you believe.

I'd still recommend that jazz fans see The Girls in the Band; the film is a respectful treatment of its subject, and the best visual resource available. But if you'd like to get to know this thread of jazz history better, here are some other materials worth exploring.

Viewing

Footage of even the most renowned jazz musicians can be rare, gender aside. Even though the clips in The Girls in the Band tend to be grievously short — brief flashes of technical brilliance that prove these women were as good as the boys, but reveal little else — their sheer number and variety is the film's greatest strength. You won't find all of this material in the same place anywhere else, at least not yet, and it's especially gratifying to connect a name with a performance. For example, Geri Allen never fails in interviews to acknowledge the debt she owes to fellow Detroit pianist and vibraphonist Terry Pollard; how amazing it is to even get a glimpse of her playing in The Girls in the Band.

Of course, if you know who you're looking for, plenty of bits and pieces are out there on YouTube. Take Pollard's performance with Terry Gibbs on the Tonight Show in 1956.

Extended footage, films and documentaries are hard to come by, but two have been made recently available on Amazon's video service. The International Sweethearts of Rhythm (1986) tells the story of this groundbreaking all-woman big band with greater depth and care than you'll find The Girls in the Band. Tiny & Ruby: Hell Divin' Women (1989) follows two of the former Sweethearts after the band split up — partners for more than 40 years who became cultural heroes for the gay-mights movement.

If you can wait a few months, producer and director Kay D. Ray's Lady B. Good should start to make its own festival rounds. A history that covers women's roles in jazz from its beginnings through the 1970s, it raised $25,000 for a final edit via Kickstarter in April. Fingers crossed that it just might just be the documentary we've all been waiting for.

Reading

If you were going to teach yourself the history of women in jazz, you couldn't do any better than by starting with Sally Placksin's American Women in Jazz: 1900 to the Present, winner of the 1983 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award (and, thankfully, about to reappear as a revised second edition). Faced with the monumental task of writing the first history on this subject, Placksin deftly weaves biographical information about major figures together with cultural and stylistic shifts. It's on her shoulders that all others who write about women in jazz stand.

The golden era for female instrumentalists was during WWII, when horn-toting equivalents of Rosie the Riveter took to the bandstand while the men were away. Sherry Tucker's landmark study Swing Shift: "All-Girl" Bands of the 1940s (2000) is as eye-opening as it is thorough, based on interviews with more than 100 musicians. If instead, however, you'd like to hear what it was like to be a woman with the otherwise all-male bands — told by a single, unwavering narrator — read Anita O'Day's autobiography High Times, Hard Times. There's never been a spunkier, more entertaining broad, as she liked to call herself. You won't want to put it down.

Interviews provide other opportunities to hear musicians in their own words, fill in historical gaps and showcase more contemporary talents. Wayne Enstice and Janice Stockhouse's Jazzwomen: Conversations With Twenty-One Musicians is thoughtful and well-executed, as are W. Royal Stokes' Living the Jazz Life and Growing Up With Jazz, broader collections in which women are amply represented.

Biographies also offer a wealth of information that escapes the standard histories. Tammy Kernodle's Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams (2004) is a standout, as is Paul de Barros' recent Shall We Play That One Together? The Life and Art of Jazz Piano Legend Marian McPartland (2012). One of the most curious and powerful — and my personal favorite — is Diane Wood Middlebrook's Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton (2008). A compassionate and sympathetic account, the book tells the story of the cross-dressing saxophonist, who was only revealed to be a woman upon her death.

Listening

If you were to look at the Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz, you might get the false impression that there are no women instrumentalists in jazz, save Lil Hardin's presence on a couple of her husband's tracks. Sadly, there is no equivalent compilation that chronologically traces women's contributions, and female instrumentalists were typically under-recorded. But here are a few recommendations to get the ball rolling.

Valaida Snow, Hot Snow: Queen of the Trumpet Sings & Swings (1982): Rosetta Records, run by Rosetta Reitz, collected singles by early jazz women into compilations, released on vinyl and cassette in the 1980s. Admired by composer Mary Lou Williams, singer and trumpeter Valaida Snow starred alongside Josephine Baker in Sissle and Blake's Hot Chocolates musical. Rocked by scandal for marrying a younger man, and the only African-American to be held in a Nazi concentration camp (for 18 months), her life is worthy of a biopic.

International Sweethearts of Rhythm, International Sweethearts of Rhythm (1984): Another Rosetta Records compilation from the group widely acknowledged as the finest of the all-woman big bands of yesteryear.

Mary Lou Williams, The Zodiac Suite (1945): It's tempting to list some of the great Mary Lou Williams' youthful large-ensemble arrangements here; of course, they were written for and recorded under the name of bandleader Andy Kirk. Arguably her most ambitious compositional work, this spare trio rendering, with one movement per astrological sign, is dominated by Williams' muscular piano.

Leonard Feather Presents Cats vs. Chicks: A Jazz Battle of the Sexes (1954): Leave it to producer Leonard Feather to initiate this battle of the bands. Trumpeter Clark Terry, trombonist Urbie Green, tenor saxophonist Lucky Thompson, pianist Horace Silver, guitarist Tal Farlow, bassists Oscar Pettiford and Percy Heath, and drummer Kenny Clarke square off against trumpeter Norma Carson, pianist Beryl Booker, vibraphonist Terry Pollard, harpist Corky Hale, guitarist Mary Osborne, bassist Bonnie Wetzel and drummer Elaine Leighton. All you need to know is "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better."

Hazel Scott, Relaxed Piano Moods (1955): How did Max Roach and Charles Mingus wind up on an album titled Relaxed Piano Moods? A trio outing by the Juilliard-trained pianist with chops to spare, it takes off with "The Jeep Is Jumpin'" and "A Foggy Day."

Joanne Brackeen, Fi-Fi Goes to Heaven (1986): Can I go, too? An intelligent and quirky record from the pianist, this mix of standards and original compositions is buoyed by Terence Blanchard and Branford Marsalis.

Geri Allen, The Gathering (1998): It's awfully hard to pick a single album by this powerful and distinctive pianist. The Gathering feels weighty and vast, thanks to its selection of complex arrangements. Still, you're never uncertain about who's at the center of it all.

Maria Schneider, Sky Blue (2007): Over the years, I've heard a number of men say quite dismissively that they don't like Schneider's music. What I'd like to know is if there's something wrong with them. Easily the most creative big-band composer of the last two decades, Schneider won a Best Instrumental Composition Grammy for her gorgeous "Cerulean Skies."

Jane Ira Bloom, Mental Weather (2008): Bloom proved her mettle with Mighty Lights (1982) and broke new ground with her incorporation of live electronics in the 1990s. But this is the album I play over and over again; it's lovely in its use of gesture and saturated by Bloom's plumulaceous tone on soprano saxophone. It's also notable for pianist Dawn Clement.

Matana Roberts, COIN COIN Chapter One: Gens de couleur libres (2011): Somewhere between the Georgia Sea Island Singers and the AACM, the saxophonist's earthy, ghostly music has a way of working on you long after it's gone. Roberts' COIN COIN project journeys through African-American memory while embracing a heritage full of dissonances.

Earlier this year, the clarinetist and composer Ben Goldberg released two remarkable albums with two almost entirely different bands. Goldberg has left a mark in many modern improvising contexts, including the New Klezmer Trio he co-founded and the Tin Hat chamber ensemble. So we asked him to reflect on some of his influences on the instrument, past and present. His two new albums, Unfold Ordinary Mind (with Nels Cline and others) and Subatomic Particle Homesick Blues (with Ron Miles and Joshua Redman), are available now via Bandcamp or other outlets. —Ed.

I'm happy to have been invited to reflect on five clarinetists whose work has enriched my life, and to share a track by each of them. Clarinet, like many instruments, is a strict taskmaster — an instrument that at times responds better to the oblique glance than direct confrontation — and we are still at the beginning of working out its many wonderful possibilities.

Of course, cultivating difficult terrain with determination and perseverance often yields a flowering of unique and personal beauty. Here are five individuals who have worked that field, and a taste of their lovely and astonishing results.

Some music festivals are known for certain specific things; others are known for a broad assortment. The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is known for everything. The city's arms are just that wide.

Every performer is welcome. This year, singer Patti Smith held a crowd spellbound in the mud just as easily as Billy Joel lifted his audience off dry ground. Jazz stylist Diane Reeves sang a Fleetwood Mac song on the first weekend just as compellingly as Fleetwood Mac sang its own songs the following weekend. And artists across nearly all of the stages played Allen Toussaint songs — including Toussaint himself.

If you missed it, well, you missed it. But there's always next year. With any luck, you'll get to see my neighbor, jazz trumpeter Lionel Ferbos, who received a standing ovation at the Economy Hall tent. Ferbos is a heck of a horn player, and this summer, he'll make 102.

Yes, in southern Louisiana, we make our ages, a vestige of the French that used to be spoken more widely here. But there's truth in the English translation. We make almost everything worth having in these parts, especially a good time. If there's not a name to describe what we sing or chant or dance to, nobody worries. The crowds and the artists prefer it that way. It's just homemade. "Obliterate category," Taj Mahal told me in an interview Sunday. "Just play music."

So the artists make the headlines and the people make the fun — gathering outside, in the rain if necessary — to shake our you-know-whats. A body has to feel at home to do a thing like that. And it takes a million little graces across the entire city to make upwards of 400,000 people feel safe enough and free enough to, as the New Orleans standard says:

Shake it

Break it

Hang it on the wall

Throw it out the window

Catch it 'fore it falls

The festival grounds were at the center of a much wider celebration. Late into the evenings, the city's nightclubs bulged with talent. On Saturday night, Allen Toussaint played Frenchman Street to a sold-out club in Marigny, the neighborhood adjacent to the French Quarter; that's like seeing a polar bear in the veldt. Midweek, Dr. John played the city's most treasured bowling alley in a tribute to Bobby Charles, whose hits included "See You Later, Alligator." Troubadour John Boutte and trumpeter Wendell Brunious played their last-day-of-the-Fest set list more than a week earlier, at yet another club on Frenchman Street. Boutte, who wrote and performs the theme song to the HBO series Treme, turned the bar into a cathedral with a haunting rendition of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah."

Then, in the middle of Jazz Fest, there was Chaz Fest — a one-day event in the Bywater neighborhood with food, swag and New Orleans singer-songwriter Alex McMurray. In rare form that day, McMurray sang with the Valparaiso Men's Chorus, which specializes in sea shanties. That's right, sea shanties. St. Claude Avenue may never be the same.

As of Wednesday, New Orleans is officially in the afterglow. But then again, we're making time for Delfaeyo Marsalis and the Uptown Jazz Orchestra, Walter "Wolfman" Washington and the Roadmasters and jazz singer Meschiya Lake with the great New Orleans pianist Tom McDermott. That's a whole lot of homemade talent playing venues around town — and it's only Wednesday. The Wednesday after Jazz Fest.

Gwen Thompkins is host of the public radio show Music Inside Out. She can be reached at gwen@musicinsideout.org

The 2013 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival wraps up Monday. This weekend and last, 12 stages have mixed such marquee names as Fleetwood Mac, Phoenix and Los Lobos with dozens of local bluesmen, soul belters and Cajun fiddle players. Some of the most iconic images of New Orleans musicians have come from Jazz Fest — thanks to photographers who jumble together at the apron of the stage, vying for the best shots.

Skip Bolen is one of them. For him, a day at Jazz Fest starts with three vital tools: iced coffee, a yellow highlighter and the festival schedule.

"We've got The Nevilles, Diane Reeves, Kermit Ruffins; B.B. King I definitely want to see," Bolen says, skimming the day's events. "Dave Matthews, he's kind of a boring artist to photograph — [but] if I photograph him I know I'll make money."

And that's how Bolen makes a living: balancing local favorites with venerable elders and, yes, the money shots that will sell. Bolen works for Getty Images, which supplies pictures to news outlets around the world. He's from Lafayette, La., and has lived in New Orleans for decades. He loves music, but on the job he's not listening so much as looking.

"Those blues musicians are so dapper," Bolen says. "They're dressed in their suits even on the hottest day of the year. They're just pouring sweat and they're a lot of fun to photograph."

The festival is held at the Fair Grounds Race Course, a New Orleans' horse track — which is kind of appropriate for the way Bolen works, dashing from one show to another. (He calls that part of the gig his "free gym membership.")

As we make our way to guitarist Little Freddie King's in-progress show at the Blues Tent, Bolen lets me in on his strategy: "We'll start at the back and work our way to the front, [so that] just in case it ends, we will have gotten at least a couple of pictures."

There is applause as we enter, which means we could be too late — but then King starts another song. Bolen flashes a wristband at security and wedges himself alongside a few dozen photographers in the photo pit. King is in a purple shirt with white polka dots, red tie, blue pants; there is a voodoo-looking skeleton on his mic stand. Bolen changes lenses. He crouches down. He climbs up on a sound monitor — probably not allowed — but he gets away with it.

"I have a little bit of a science as to how I shoot," he explains later. "If somebody's holding a guitar, I want to shoot in one particular direction to get the front of the guitar, not the back of the guitar. If somebody's playing a trumpet, I kinda don't want to shoot into the back of their hand, I want to shoot into their hand. So going into the photo pit I have to think about who the artist is and what they're playing and where I think I have to be to get the best shot."

The competition is fierce, as is the pressure to capture something unique. For the big acts, hundreds of photographers point their lenses at the same performer, and time is often tight. Many artists have a policy: after three songs, clear the photo pit.

"Sometimes there's musicians who don't want anything between them and the audience," Bolen says. "And some bands don't want any photography at all."

Bolen has built relationships with local musicians over years of shooting them. At one point we run into Troy Andrews, better known as Trombone Shorty. Bolen photographed him at one of his first gigs, on stage at the 2001 Jazz Fest.

"That was one of your first performances," Bolen reminds Andrews. "You were what, 12?" Andrews replies, "12, 14, yeah," and then says of the photo, "That's my favorite one."

It means a lot to Bolen when the artists like his photos. He tells of showing one to Dave Brubeck; the late pianist liked it so much he asked to keep it. Bolen has even been asked to take musicians' family portraits.

But today he's on assignment. So we catch a merengue band and jazz singer Diane Reeves, then hit the Cajun Fais Do Do Stage before getting to the obligatory headliner, Dave Matthews — where there's a sea of fans and some ominous gray clouds.

Torrential rain starts during the first song. Cameras disappear under ponchos. Bolen bails and scurries to catch the start of B.B. King's set. It's still pouring as King warms up inside a huge tent.

"It's the perfect ending to a weekend of Jazz Fest," Bolen says. "B.B. King — can't ask for better than that. He has such great expressions." Then, perking up: "Oh, it's starting!"

After a few songs, the photographers get shooed out. Bolen would like to stay, just to listen to the rest of the show. But he has thousands of photos to edit, caption and upload just from today. He'll get only a few hours' sleep. Then it's back up for more iced coffee, sprinting through the mud and hoping for a few more great shots.

The pianist and composer John Beasley has one of the most formidable tasks of anyone associated with today's International Jazz Day, the celebration produced by UNESCO and the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. He's music director of the centerpiece concert to be live-streamed from Istanbul tonight (2 p.m. ET in the U.S.). That means Beasley put together the lineups from a star-studded international cast, with a set list meant to charm the world.

His cast is headed by international superstars Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Eddie Palmieri, Robert Glasper, Ramsey Lewis, Esperanza Spalding, Joss Stone, Anat Cohen, Branford Marsalis, Hugh Masekela, Keiko Matsui, Lee Ritenour, Joe Louis Walker, Ruben Blades and Jean-Luc Ponty. They'll perform with Turkish musicians Husnu Senlendirici, Imer Demirer, Bilal Karaman and many others. They'll appear throughout 12 distinct musical segments at Hagia Irene, an ancient domed building — the first Christian church built in Constantinople.

Having served as music director for artists ranging from Queen Latifah to Freddie Hubbard — and worked as MD for the first International Jazz Day concert in 2012 — Beasley seems well-prepared for the job. His Louisiana upbringing and prodigious talents have resulted in jazz chops that earned him a Grammy nomination for his 2009 album Positootly! His commercial instincts have landed him work as a soundtrack writer for movies and TV reality shows. An extra dollop of credibility comes from Miles Davis, who hired Beasley for his last touring band.

Beasley spoke to A Blog Supreme on the phone from Chicago, where he was about to fly to Istanbul, having gigged with Stanley Clarke the night before.

Howard Mandel for A Blog Supreme: John, you're about to fly to Istanbul to direct a live global broadcast of a concert with an international cast of jazz all-stars performing in a dozen different combinations. Are you excited, nervous, full of anticipation?

John Beasley: Not yet. I was music director for the first International Jazz Day concert last year, broadcast from Paris, you know, and the planning for Istanbul started six months ago, so I'm feeling confident. There are always last-minute changes, but you've just got to be liquid and roll with it. The nice thing about this project with all these incredible musicians is that everyone checks their egos at the door. Luckily, I have relationships with most of these musicians already, and have played with a lot of them. So all I have to do is say, "Here's the tempo — go!" and they do.

One challenge is that because it's telecast and webcast, all the segments are six minutes long. To limit people like Wayne Shorter and John McLaughlin, for instance, to playing 32-bar solos without acting as the jazz police — which is the last thing I want to do — that's the challenge.

ABS: What were first steps of planning that you took six months ago?

JB: First was looking back at last year's event and thinking about how we could incorporate more geographically appropriate material and people. We wanted to extend our reach towards the Middle East, because this concert originates in Turkey, after all. To emphasize that flavor, we started looking for Turkish musicians, and I began looking for the right repertoire. We decided to do Billy Strayhorn's "Isfahan," written for Duke Ellington's Far East Suite and named for a city in Iran. We'll do Dizzy Gillespie's "Night in Tunisia," using [Turkish-American record producer] Arif Mardin's arrangement that Chaka Khan recorded, which is iconic, as a finale. We took the liberty of changing the words — now it's "Night in Istanbul."

I also had to think about personnel issues, like how to incorporate vocalists Dianne Reeves and Al Jarreau — who's singing "Take Five" in homage to Dave Brubeck — into ensembles with Turkish musicians. When you have vocalists, you've got to do the material in ways that work for them.

As more and more talent was enlisted, it became a question of who would play with who. We have almost 40 guest artists and only 12 segments. I thought about how I could put each musician in a musical situation they wouldn't be totally comfortable with, so they'd have to stretch themselves a little bit while keeping their own vibe — which is what jazz musicians do. Then there was the task of figuring out how the material will work in a concert so that it has a good flow.

ABS: Does the venue require special attention to acoustic issues, and is sound production part of your responsibilities?

JB: The concert's being produced in Hagia Irene, a fourth-century stone church in the garden of Topkapi Palace, so, yes, it will be reverberant, like playing in Notre Dame. That will be a challenge in particular for our drummers. They can't be too bashy! And, yes, I'm in direct contact with the sound crew, headed up by Herbie's man. The backline is atrocious: We have a bunch of guitarists who need their own amps, and two trap kits plus percussion. Because the place has been a museum for the last couple hundred years, we have to go through a ministry even to hang up curtains to dampen the sound.

I have to keep track of the rehearsal schedule, which is kind of a nightmare because everyone's arriving at different times. And the video crew — they have to know vibe-wise what's happening with the songs. The lighting guys need the same information. That falls to me, too.

ABS: Do you have any ambivalence about doing this in Turkey, a country which has been accused of human-rights abuses?

JB: Not really. Our own American history is full of problems, like our treatment of Native Americans. No, I see producing the concert in Turkey as a way to be inclusive, to get all these people together, to show the world and the Turkish people how through dialogue things really can be solved. Putting a huge show like this together with people from all over the world around jazz, which is the original world music, a medium for the fusion — for lack of a better word — of cultures. That's how we got here. And this fusion of cultures is still going on.

It takes courage beyond borders to play this music. In the 1930s, jazz guys came to Europe not knowing who they'd play with, but look what came out of that. Making these connections, opening communications, is why we're doing a Jazz Day concert. The mandate is to do it every year in a different center of international commerce, which Istanbul certainly is.

ABS: Have you been to Istanbul before?

JB: No. My plane leaves in an hour.

ABS: Are you going to have any personal time there, to see the city?

JB: Well, I parachute into complete immersion in the gig. But there's a big national holiday on May 1, which I have off. For the next couple of days, I'll do workshops around town at conservatories and universities, and then I have a couple days off again, which I'll use to rest up and walk around. I'm reading a really great book, Istanbul: Memories and the City by the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, which is like his travelogue written as autobiography, so I'll chase down some of his haunts.

ABS: You're quite well-known and in demand on the West Coast, but not so much elsewhere in the U.S., like New York. Do you think this concert will add to your own visibility?

JB: Well, I'm going to play "Isfahan" with Terence Blanchard on trumpet, Russian tenor saxophonist Igor Butman, Australian alto sax player Dale Barlow, Russian trombonist Alevtina Polyakova, Terri Lyne Carrington on drums and bassist Ben Williams, so I'm pretty excited about that. But I'm just as excited about Milton Nascimento coming from Brazil to sing "Bridges," from Courage, his first album to be released in the States, in 1968. It's an important, positive message song, about building bridges.

ABS: Have you thought about staging a campaign on the East Coast to take advantage of the bump to your profile?

JB: I go to New York to record, and I've gigged there, but not lately. I was at the Jazz Standard last summer, had drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts and alto saxophonist Antonio Hart in the band, and we sold out both shows. I hope they'll ask me back. I need people like you to write about me, to get my name in the magazines and on the jazz blogs.

Recently, in L.A., I put a [Thelonious] Monk big band together. MONK'estra, I call it. I started writing these big-band charts and realized quickly I could twist Monk's songs up, keep the spirit and add something unique of my own. As most great songs are, they're really pliable. We've had 10 or 12 gigs. So that's my new project, with the cream of L.A. jazz players, and I'd love to take it on tour. But, economically speaking, it would probably be best if I just traveled with the rhythm section, maybe a lead trumpeter and trombonist, hire other musicians locally, rehearse for a couple days, then hit.

ABS: Back to International Jazz Day: Is Herbie Hancock your boss?

JB: I'm particularly close with Herbie, and he's the figurehead for sure, for all of us. International Jazz Day is his vision, and as I see it we're helping him to execute his vision. He's totally busy, so I'm not talking to him every day, but when I need to talk to him, he's there, engaged, and he wants to know what's going on. He's a great boss, because he lets us do what we're hired to do. He's not in anybody's face.

It's all really about International Jazz Day. If I were a club owner, a jazz educator, a musical-instrument store, a record store — anywhere in the world — I'd totally capitalize on this. It's like Earth Day is for environmentalism, a great opportunity for our music to get a lot of great publicity.

I'm totally looking forward to the concert. I don't get nervous. You can't get nervous with these guys. It's like I told you, I'll just say, "Go!"

Bremen may be best known for its love of soccer and Beck's beer, but every April, its Jazzahead! festival turns the German port town into a capital city of jazz for a weekend

What began as a small trade fair and showcase for German jazz nine years ago has grown into a four-day festival with more than 80 concerts and 600 exhibits, attracting 20,000 jazz fans and professionals. What sets Jazzahead! apart from other festivals — and makes it a magnet for young performers and industry insiders — is its focus on artist development. Organizers host matchmaking sessions that pair musicians with bookers, agents and the media.

"Everybody who comes gets that positive energy, because they meet, network and make plans about how to improve the situation for jazz together," says Peter Schulze, the festival's artistic director.

Jazzahead! has a European focus, but more and more visitors come from around the world. Many artists premiere new projects — and come from as far away as Finland, Albania and Brazil. A dozen acts are coming from the festival's partner country this year, Israel.

Since many of these artists aren't well-known in the U.S., I've been exploring the Jazzahead! roster at the jazz bee, WBGO's HD2 stream for emerging artists. WBGO is hosting an around-the-clock showcase of recordings by groups at this year's festival, and will broadcast concert highlights on producer Josh Jackson's weekly music magazine, The Checkout, on May 7 and 14. Here's a sneak peek at five acts which surprised me, and may surprise you.

Comparisons have always helped me appreciate jazz. An artist plays a tune fast; another does it as a ballad. A trumpeter finishes his solo, and a saxophonist takes that closing phrase and morphs it in a different direction. A musician revisits a composition years later with a new arrangement and ensemble. Aligned side by side, you get a good sense of why jazz is a music of individual style, and of gradual accretion, and of friendly "Oh, yeah, watch this" motivation.

I got that feeling recently listening to a recent duet album from the late pianists Tommy Flanagan and Jaki Byard. In 1982, they played a fondly remembered San Francisco club called the Keystone Korner as a duo: two guys, two pianos. It's recently been released as The Magic of 2, and from the opening song, comparison is the name of the game. Here's their take on Charlie Parker's "Scrapple From the Apple":

Tommy Flanagan can be heard stating the melody and taking the first solo. At 3:38, you hear applause as Flanagan wraps his solo and Jaki Byard gets his time to shine. A slightly chaotic closing section leads to a final melody statement from Byard.

Both pianists are among the most respected in jazz history, and were born less than a decade apart. Flanagan's resume counts Ella Fitzgerald and Coleman Hawkins as employers; Byard played with Charles Mingus and Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

But they are clearly different pianists. Flanagan plays long, flowing lines; Byard builds off short ideas and repeating phrases. Flanagan's right hand clearly comes from a classic bebop perspective; Byard throws in more standard blues phrases and dissonant Flanagan has a spirited kick, but is relatively even-keeled compared to Byard's penchant for the disjointed and spasmodic. The contrast is even more distinct in other songs throughout this record: Flanagan the elegant hard-swinger, Byard the wild card whose vocabulary spans stride piano, Thelonious Monk and beyond.

The two-piano sound can be a bit cluttered — with so many notes at once, the shades and inner voicings can get lost — but when artists can make it work (and they don't always), it hits with a feeling of intimacy and overdrive at once. I'm thinking, naturally, of the many duets on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz, but there are a number of other examples, too, many of which are mentioned on this thread. YouTube hosts a great clip of a Berlin concert where Byard joins all-time piano greats Earl Hines, Teddy Wilson, Bill Evans, John Lewis and Lennie Tristano on stage. (He actually duets with Hines at the end, which is fantastic.) Notably, Tommy Flanagan recorded with Hank Jones a few times.

I haven't heard much of those Flanagan-Jones albums, but I'm guessing they're closer to seamless. It's a pairing of two Detroit-bred pianists with reputations for post-bop sophistication, whereas here the appeal — for me, anyway — is one of contrast. Each artist picks three solo pieces, which also says a little something about how they approached this date. Flanagan does three pieces by Billy Strayhorn, the composer who wrote much of his most beautiful music for the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Byard picks an old standard and two tunes of more recent vintage: a Stevie Wonder song and a jazz-fusion-pop number by Chuck Mangione. Flanagan picked consistently great repertory; Byard went out on a limb to find some contemporary resonance.

But there was certainly deep respect between the two. You can even hear Byard subtly salute his companion on stage during his solo take on Stevie Wonder's ballad "Send One Your Love." At around the halfway point, Byard transforms it into John Coltrane's "Giant Steps." First, he outlines the chords as a ballad, then as a stride piano romp, then as a virtuosic showcase, and then back to the original melody.

It's likely that Byard knew the identity of the pianist on Coltrane's original recording of "Giant Steps": Tommy Flanagan.

The percussionist and bandleader Tito Puente would have celebrated his 90th birthday this weekend on April 20. And the recently released box set Quatro: The Definitive Collection is a great place to start celebrating the once and forever King of Latin Music. It captures the driving sound of big band mambo and cha-cha-cha that launched people onto dance floors for decades.

When he died in 2000 at age 73, the New York City native had more than 100 recordings to his name. The new box set features his recordings for RCA in the 1950s, when he was at the height of his popularity. That includes the 1958 release Dance Mania, which remains one of Puente's most popular recordings.

Quatro features tracks from Puente's move to RCA records (from a smaller indie label specializing in Afro-Caribbean dance music). In his book Mambo Diablo: My Journey With Tito Puente, biographer Joe Conzo points out that Puente hoped that RCA would allow him to stretch out and incorporate more jazz elements into his records.

The entire country was in the midst of one of the first Latin music fads, and the mambo was the star of the show. The label wanted to tap into this Latin market and signed artists like Perez Prado and Puente. His first RCA album, Cuban Carnival (1956), was jam-packed with just what the label wanted: a collection of irresistible grooves that proved to be not only popular but also influential. One of the songs, "Pa' Los Rumberos," helped fuel another Latin music infatuation a generation later when it was included on the million-selling Santana III in 1971.

The next year Puente finally got what he wanted when RCA released Night Beat, an album heavily influenced by jazz. Featuring future Tonight Show bandleader Doc Severinson on trumpet, it was danceable, but listening to it more than 50 years later, it's pretty obvious Puente wanted people to sit and listen to this album.

But it was 1958's Dance Mania that sold the most. That makes sense: The Tito Puente Orchestra was, of course, a dance band.

From 1948 until 1966, the Palladium Ballroom, at the corner of 53rd and Broadway, was the city's mecca for Afro-Caribbean dance music. And for a lot of that time, Puente was one of the main attractions.

When I interviewed percussionist and bandleader Ray Barretto in 2003, he told me that Puente had asked him to sit in with the orchestra one night at The Palladium. At the end of the gig, Puente told Barretto he had the job (replacing a future legend in Mongo Santamaria) and to report to a recording studio to record a new album. That recording turned out to be Dance Mania. Barretto told me that if you listen closely, you'll notice the congas are not part of the precision stops and starts: Barretto wasn't yet familiar with the arrangements!

Though Puente stayed with RCA for less than six years, the company's vault contains some of the best examples of Puente's genius as a bandleader, composer and timbalero. His 90th birthday is a wonderful reason to crank these discs, move the furniture out of the way and celebrate Puente for what he did best: getting people to dance.

The advent of bebop added a fresh sound to American music. It also added new voices to some metropolitan radio stations: the late-night jazz DJs who specialized in presenting this new music to their fellow hipster nightflies.

To recognize the work of the groundbreaking DJs who lent them critical exposure, jazz musicians of the period would occasionally write songs in their honor. Here are five of those songs.