NPR Music

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.).

It's kind of surprising that Iron and Wine's Sam Beam has ended up making his living in music. Early on, he received a cautionary lesson from his dad.

"My father used to book Motown bands in college," Beam says. "And he imparted some wisdom on me that it's an easy gig to lose your shirt in."

Beam grew up in South Carolina; he studied art in college, then got into making movies. Music was just something he did on the side, for fun.

In a small, packed Washington, D.C., living room late one December night, I heard a cacophony of horns, keys, drums and guitars that simply floored me. It was brash, zany, brainy, scary and danceable. At the end of a long year of amazing live music, this would turn out to be one of the most memorable concerts I'd seen.

"And I will be changed from this creature that I am." — Peace in the Valley

Interviewing Odd Future visionary Tyler, the Creator is a crapshoot.

Old songs provide a lens through which we can view lifestyles and work-ways, now passed into history, when manual labors filled the day. Hear of horse-drawn ploughs, hand loom weavers, miners and the men who fished under sail with Davy Steele, Dick Gaughan, Christine Kydd and many more.

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