Music

The Uptown Vocal Jazz Quartet has been serenading audiences in its native Washington, D.C., across the country and even as far as France for more than two decades. But its members are finding ways to bring something new to their performances. Bandleader and co-founder Ginny Carr says she wrote the words and music to all 10 songs on the quartet's new album, Hustlin' for a Gig — a relative rarity in a jazz world defined by time-tested standards.

James McMurtry's career started hot, thanks to a lucky series of circumstances in 1987. First, at a friend's behest, he entered and won a high-profile songwriting competition. Then, when John Mellencamp got involved in a project written by McMurtry's father (the novelist Larry McMurtry), it gave the young folk-rock musician a chance to get his demo tape into Mellencamp's hands.

Moya Brennan heads up this episode from the Mountain Stage archives, recorded live in West Virginia in December 2007. Brennan grew up in County Donegal, Ireland, as the eldest daughter in a musical family of nine children. Following the lead of their music-teacher mother and bandleader father, all 11 Brennans would often play together in the family pub.

Grady Tate has been lucky enough to have two distinct careers in jazz. He made a name for himself as a session drummer with impeccable rhythm, for music legends such as Quincy Jones, Wes Montgomery, Ella Fitzgerald and Aretha Franklin.

The English piano-rock band Keane formed back in 1997, but it wasn't until 2004 that the group's album Hopes and Fears took off on the strength of the smash single "Somewhere Only We Know." A Best New Artist Grammy nomination followed, and in the years since, the group has released three more albums: 2006's Under the Iron Sea, 2008's Perfect Symmetry and this year's Strangeland.

• Why yes, that was indeed Daniel Barenboim carrying the Olympic flag at the opening ceremonies.
• Filmmaker Danny Boyle's sprawling opening ceremonies pageant featured a cameo by the London Symphony Orchestra, Simon Rattle and comedian Rowan Atkinson, aka Mr. Bean, in the theme from Chariots of Fire.

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Pablo Helguera is a New York-based artist working with sculpture, drawing, photography and performance. You can see more of his work at Artworld Salon and on his own site.