One of the most celebrated voices in jazz returns to her old stomping grounds in Portland, Ore., to honor her longtime mentor, Thara Memory. Watch Esperanza Spalding and the Pacific Crest Jazz Orchestra perform “City of Roses” in the place that inspired the song.

The host of NPR’s JazzSet joins Marian McPartland for a set of Duke Ellington and Gershwin tunes.

Since the Harlem Renaissance, African-American musicians have portrayed black history as extended musical works. Jazz is full of such long-form compositions. Hear five examples from composers such as Oliver Nelson, Wynton Marsalis and Duke Ellington.

The emotive alto saxophonist has been summoned all around the United States, and now calls his native Baltimore home. He returns to New York for this performance celebrating the release of his debut album, Songs From This Season.

The stylish jazz singer and a full band visited Apogee’s Berkeley Street Studio for a special KCRW event. Watch James flex his singular voice as he performs the funky single “Trouble.”

A pianist for Miles Davis and Frank Zappa, Duke plays “My Funny Valentine” with Marian McPartland.

A strong pianist who’s put out 19 albums. An emotive saxophonist who’s celebrating his first. Philadelphia and Baltimore musicians tackle New York in a twin bill of impassioned straight-ahead jazz, presented as a live broadcast and webcast on Feb. 20.

Jazz fans will surely know some of the musicians who have called the City of Roses home: Charlie Rouse, Jim Pepper, Esperanza Spalding and more. But the annual Portland Jazz Festival, which opens Friday, turns the spotlight on a diverse community of talent in place right now.

From the Newport Jazz Festival, guitarist Bill Frisell shines in three completely different settings: with his band playing reworking John Lennon tunes, in a duo with violinist Jenny Scheinman, and with The Bad Plus playing music of Paul Motian.

Hear the pioneering jazz drummer talk about his 40th-anniversary tour and working with Miles Davis.

The saxophonist and his quartet cross-pollinate Indian classical music and vintage Captain Beefheart to create complicated rhythms and solos reminiscent of jazz-rock fusion.

After he helped to develop the bluesy, driving hard bop style in the ’50s and ’60s, his funkier commercial hit recordings shaped black pop music through the advent of hip-hop. A committed music educator, the Detroit native was 80 when he died last week.

In the midst of the U.S. civil rights movement, pianist and composer Randy Weston found himself in Morocco, where he incorporated African musical forms and musicians in his recorded work. Weston returns to Piano Jazz with host Marian McPartland to perform “A Ballad for T.,” “Little Niles” and “African Lady.”

The legacy of the late hip-hop producer extended far beyond the beats he painstakingly created. Since his death, it’s also found artistic kinship in a generation of young jazz artists looking to square their instrumental training with their love of all modern music.

Composer and pianist Jason Moran ushers in his era as Artistic Advisor for Jazz at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., with this performance, captured by JazzSet in honor of Black History Month.

The history of jazz is often told as a sequence of epic heroes, legends whose careers proceed from one great accomplishment to another. Coincidentally, one widely admired saxophonist has been reading Homer lately. Potter presents his new Odyssey-inspired suite The Sirens in concert.

On her latest album, Claroscuro, the jazz clarinetist explores influences that range from Louis Armstrong to Brazilian music to that of her native Israel. It’s this desire to adapt the instrument to so many musical traditions that has earned Cohen such acclaim.

The prodigious drummer Marcus Gilmore, 25, has been playing with the biggest names in jazz since he was a teenager. He’s coming off a career year that saw him named the top rising star among jazz critics. It helps that his grandfather is Roy Haynes, one of the great pioneers of the drum kit.

Shorter says that in combos led by John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Art Blakey, he learned a crucial rule of being an effective bandleader: Leave the musicians alone.

Frisell has been on the cutting edge of jazz guitar since his arrival on the scene in the early 1980s. With amazing technique and a creative mind, he has incorporated the whole of American music in his work, relying on country, blues, rock and jazz. Hear an interview and performance.