Music

It's easy to throw the word legend around when you talk to musicians who regularly appear on World Cafe. So when a real legend shows up, you've run out of superlatives.

Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko, a leading figure in mid-1960s European avant-garde jazz who enjoyed a major career resurgence over the past 20 years, died on Sunday in Warsaw. His death was confirmed by his daughter, Anna Stanko, who said that her father had been diagnosed with terminal cancer in April of this year, and had been suffering with pneumonia since June. He was 76 years old.

Note: NPR's First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page.

Kamasi Washington's idea of heaven is the world he creates and retreats to in his mind. The jazz torchbearer's double album Heaven and Earth, out today, represents that inward heaven versus his outward reality on Earth.

Ozark Highlands Radio will make it's debut on KIOS on Sunday July 1 at 2:00 PM. The program features live music and interviews from the Ozark Folk Center State Park in Mt. View, Arkansas. Also feature host segments with historians, authors and personalities explore the people, stories and history of the Ozark region.

River city Folk with Tom May will move to 1:00 from it's current  2:00 time slot July 1. The Folk Sampler with Mike Flynn will air it's final program June 24 at 1:00. Flynn announced his retitrement in April.

New York's Village Vanguard may come closer than any other club to embodying the spirit of jazz. For nearly 30 years, the guardian of that spirit has been the Vanguard's formidable impresaria, Lorraine Gordon. Gordon, a jazz champion since her teen years and one of the music's female pioneers, died Saturday at the age of 95.

Tuesday on Jazz in the Afternoon, Chris Cooke welcomes special guest trumpeter Arturo Sandoval for conversation about his latest tour "Dear Diz," a tribute to Dizzy Gillespie. 

Cecil Taylor, whose stunning and bravely unorthodox piano language made him one of the most important postwar American avant-gardists in any artistic medium, leaves more than a legacy of musical provocation after his death yesterday evening.