Recorded fast and almost entirely improvised, ‘Music for Babies’ sets Julia Shapiro’s melodic instincts against Samur Khouja’s appetite for dissonance, and the conversation takes in sad clowns, nose flutes, hearing music as a child, and why they never went to meet Maria Nissan.

Half a century after the Prestige trilogy, the tenor saxophonist marks ‘Turn the Music Up’ with an account of Horace Tapscott’s Los Angeles, McCoy Tyner’s touch, Pharoah Sanders’s generosity, and a practice routine he hasn’t altered since he was a teenager.

Steve Shelley, Gustavo Riviera, and Paulo Kishimoto discuss ‘Catacroma,’ the overlooked Brazilian rock and roller Erasmo Carlos, and the weekly radio playlist that keeps three musicians in two hemispheres listening to the same records.

The Danish songwriter sang his first album quietly into a microphone at home, and on ‘Herzsprung’ he had to fill a room.

Kurt Wagner discusses Lambchop’s 17th album, ‘Punching the Clown,’ in a conversation running from untrained singers and lined-out gospel to the difference between spiritualism and religion.

Producer Martin Bisi on the same Brooklyn building since 1979, the rezoning of Gowanus, why genres work like social movements, and Dancing on the Power Lines.

The saxophonist on McCoy Tyner, his friendship with Pharoah Sanders, and why he doesn’t observe the jazz lineage — he is it. Plus the album’s title story.

Sound artist Josh Mason on his Greyfade FOLIO release ‘Kicking A Dark Horse,’ a modular album and book built to be entered at any point.

The four-time Grammy winner on the new Social Science album, trusting collaborators before they’ve earned it, and calling herself a frustrated drummer.

The Hit Parade host on what better data revealed about hit songs, why country radio guards its gate, and his refusal to believe in guilty pleasures.