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Funerals celebrate life as much as they mourn the departed, and Robert Glasper's poignant requiem "Tribute" — assembled in honor of his mother — makes no secret of that. Glasper and his bandmates initiate a plaintive piano-trio hymn that soon underscores Rev. Joe Ratliff's poetic eulogy.

It's hard to decide what to make of The Bad Plus, whose sound has no pretense of operating at either extreme of jazz and rock, but instead plays with the colors in between.

Brazilian singer Ceu loves soul, jazz, hip-hop and afro-pop. And those influences are apparent on her new self-titled CD. But the foundation underlying it all is the Brazilian samba. "It's what sticks to the soles of my feet, " she says.

Saxophonist and clarinetist Ned Rothenberg has always been a musical cosmopolitan. Early on, he studied jazz with George Coleman and shakuhachi flute in Japan. Rothenberg's new album, Inner Diaspora, sends him back to his roots.

The songs of singer-songwriter Patty Griffin are full of heartbreak and longing — so much so that a friend recently challenged her to write a happy song. She discusses that song and her new CD, Children Running Through.

The tradition of rock stars singing about the bottom rung of the working-class ladder has been around as long as rock itself. But few did it with such heartbreaking empathy and iridescent beauty as Pete Townshend and Ronnie Lane did on 1977's "Heart to Hang Onto."

Formerly half of the iconic country duo The Louvin Brothers, Louvin is the latest country war horse to see his career resurrected by well-meaning hipsters. Revisiting his gospel-influenced, early-'50s classic, "Great Atomic Age" neatly conjures up the twin menaces of nuclear angst and eternal damnation.

For some musicians good song writing is elementary. For others it's elementary school. A CD called Kid Pan Alley collects tunes created in classrooms around the country and recorded by top Nashville artists, including Amy Grant.

The Serious Monkee had chops as a songwriter, as well as an unusual sound: a glossy merger of country and rock that took what The Byrds had been doing a step closer to pop. Magnetic South foreshadows the country-rock of The Eagles, whose debut arrived two years later.

Years before Dr. Spock and other child-rearing gurus, a renowned pediatrician in Poland pioneered the field by advocating that parents simply trust their instincts. He was executed by the Nazis, along with the orphans he cared for in a Warsaw ghetto.