Ahead of the Curve: An Interview with Patrice Rushen

Jazz composer and R&B artist Patrice Rushen talks about how she fought for control of her music and her career in the late 1970s at Elektra -- and produced an extraordinary run of jazz-R&B-disco hybrid albums that the industry wasn't quite ready for.

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Ahead of the Curve: An Interview with Patrice Rushen

Jazz composer and R&B artist Patrice Rushen talks about how she fought for control of her music and her career in the late 1970s at Elektra -- and produced an extraordinary run of jazz-R&B-disco hybrid albums that the industry wasn't quite ready for.

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Jazz composer and R&B artist Patrice Rushen talks about how she fought for control of her music and her career in the late 1970s at Elektra -- and produced an extraordinary run of jazz-R&B-disco hybrid albums that the industry wasn't quite ready for.

The Mariachi Ghost announce their new album, Puro Dolor, as dark theater unfurls between living piñatas in their new music video for "Cuerpo Mortal".

Texas singer-songwriter Will Beeley drifted away from making music, but he's back to tell stories on Highways & Heart Attacks, his first album in 40 years.

By staging a thinly veiled version of Harvey Weinstein – played by John Malkovich in a fat suit – David Mamet aims for controversy in Bitter Wheat.

Another post-reunion project for Slowdive's Rachel Goswell. In collaborator Steve Clarke she has discovered a talented songwriter and married him, no less.

Jazz bassist Linda May Han Oh adds a string quartet to her group to produce something wholly integrated on Aventurine.

Jazz composer and R&B artist Patrice Rushen talks about how she fought for control of her music and her career in the late 1970s at Elektra -- and produced an extraordinary run of jazz-R&B-disco hybrid albums that the industry wasn't quite ready for.

Equal parts gritty and subtly heartening, tragically jarring and emotionally resonant, Ruchika Tomar's debut A Prayer for Travelers is one of the strangest and most enjoyably wrought coming-of-age stories to appear in recent years.

Rob Marshall's upcoming The Little Mermaid, starring Halle Bailey in the traditionally white character role of Ariel, sure has stirred things up in the sea of social media. Disney-glittered little girls, it seems, see it differently.

Looking upon Virginia Woolf with an immature and childish creative lust, writer/director Chanya Button and co-writer Eileen Atkins reduce her to a bland literary figure in Vita & Virginia, leaving us to remember the contrarian truth.

Cleverly, Claire Lombardo's novel The Most Fun We Ever Had de-romanticizes motherhood even as it sanctifies it.

Eleni Mandell spent two years teaching songwriting to women who were incarcerated. The experience informed the material on her new album, Wake Up Again. "I hoped that the women would leave there some day with one more thing to support them and keep them from getting in trouble again," she says.

One year since the release of Morcheeba's Blaze Away, the band unleash a special edition full of remixes, which leads to questions of how their process works, how some songs got remixes and others didn't, and what the next 20 years of Morcheeba look like.

Chris Schwartz's memoir on founding Ruffhouse Records attempts to be many things but doesn't fully deliver on any of them, making for a conventionally-structured memoir that often reads as slapdash and dry.

On Sinner, Detroit producer Moodymann lets us listen in on the hallucinatory, self-contradictory conversation he's perpetually having with himself.

Pere Ubu's The Long Goodbye is an amazing achievement that accomplishes its mission of encapsulating a 45-year career with wit and aplomb.

Bleached's Don't You Think You've Had Enough? is a summer record with big sing-along power pop songs that deliver.

With A Lousy Day in Harlem, the Ed Palermo Big Band abandons the Zappa tunes -- for now -- to focus on an engaging collection of jazzy tunes by Palermo and others.

At its best, animation comedy show King of the Hill asks, Why are"race" issues in America always about white people?

The second day of the preeminent Basque festival Bilbao BBK Live saw the Strokes and local star Rosalía cause mayhem at the sold-out event.

Liam Gallagher brings the hits, Slaves bring out the anger, and Thom Yorke gets experimental in a cozy first night of the 14th edition of BBK Live.

Scholar Qiana Whitted's EC Comics: Race, Shock & Social Protest explores a different path in EC Comic's history: their work with social justice stories and the resulting censorship in 1950s America.

As in the America of the 1970s -- with its political corruption, war, economic straits, and fatalism -- Robert Altman's Brewster McCloud resonates loudly in these times. Shall we join the circus freaks dancing on the grave of an absurd and unjust society?

Electro/worldbeat singer, songwriter, producer Azam Ali steps out of Niyaz for a solo turn to pay tribute to '80s synthpop heroes on "Phantoms".

Chicago songwriter and guitarist Bill MacKay reflects on his softly powerful recent experimental rock work, and a life spent in thrall to the innate poetry in people and places.