Music

The late-night talk show format hasn't changed much since the 1950s. There's the opening monologue, a comedy bit, two celebrity interviews, and a musical guest. So it felt a bit odd to see Frank Ocean — a young man who embodies a particular changing of the guard in pop music — on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon last night. I was in the audience at Late Night, and actually, "waiting" to see Ocean would be more accurate, because that's what most of Monday's show entailed for the studio audience.

To honor Philip Glass' 75th birthday this year, we here at NPR Music commissioned Glass to create a short work that would be great fun for amateur and professional singers alike. A big part of what we do is to try to make all kinds of music engaging and accessible — and wouldn't it be great to invite anyone who wanted to come and sing in a world premiere by one of the most celebrated composers of our time?

For the last 18 years, the Essence Music Festival has been the go-to event for African-Americans, especially African-American women. For three days in New Orleans, hundreds of thousands show up for R&B and gospel concerts and panels on politics, financial planning and parenting.

If it's a party, as creator George Wein describes it, it's a party with a purpose.

"New Orleans is a party city and they party," Wein says. "People party here. If you go to the hotels — 40-floor hotels — [there's] like 40 floors of parties."

Since 1954, the Newport Jazz Festival has brought live music to seaside New England. This year, you can see it even if you can't be there: NPR Music returns to the Newport Jazz Festival for a live video webcast and recording on August 4-5, 2012.

NPR Music will hit the road later this month and head north to Newport, R.I., where we'll live broadcast and webcast two weekends of concerts from the Newport Folk and Newport Jazz festivals. Our folk coverage begins with a live webcast of Wilco on Friday night, Jul. 27.