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The great Ella Fitzgerald would have turned 100 a year ago this month. But while she's gone, her influence on other singers remains and, of course, her recordings are timeless. Among her most devoted acolytes is Bay Area singer Amanda King, who celebrates Fitzgerald's early years in concert on Thursday, April 5, in Orinda. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It's always wonderful to see and hear a veteran singer. We sit and listen for traces of what we remember from their glory days and delight in how they still seem to enjoy delivering a song. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

You could see it on the face of the great bassist: Dave Holland was clearly having as much fun playing on Saturday night, Oct. 21, at SFJazz as the audience members were having as they listened. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Bob Hilmoe isn't really sure he wants you to know that last week he sat in a San Francisco Botanical Garden field long after the front gates had closed and played a piano all by himself at 9 p.m. "The mosquitoes finally kicked me out," confessed Hilmoe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The sublime vocalist Catherine Russell has "Harlem on My Mind," the title of her latest album and the theme of her performance on Saturday, July 15, at SFJazz. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Barbara Dane will celebrate her 90th birthday with a special show at SFJazz on Thursday, July 13, with ample evidence of why she's reached the status of living legend. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Paula West has a request, and it's "Gimme Some Truth." She'll include the John Lennon song when she starts her two-week summer residency at Feinstein's at the Nikko on Thursday, July 6. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Kellye Gray went back to her recording roots to make her latest album, "Rendering," assembling a large group of friends and musicians to replicate the creation of her sublime debut album, "Standards in Gray," released 25 years ago. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Michael Feinstein has been crusading for the storied Great American Songbook for more than four decades, and there have been times when it's seemed as if he's an army of one. But he's glad to report that things are looking up for a broader appreciation of the music of the Gershwins, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, Burton Lane and others. Even younger listeners are finding the rhythm fascinatin'. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Jacob Collier hit the stage dancing in his stocking feet at his SFJazz debut Wednesday, June 7, and never stopped. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It's hard to believe, listening to that velvet voice with her unequaled phrasing, that Ella Fitzgerald was born 100 years ago this year and left us with her enduring musical legacy in 1996. She was Bella Ella, the first lady of song, the first African American woman to win a Grammy Award, worshiped by other singers like Frank Sinatra, and simply one of the greatest singers who ever lived. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

"Mad Men" may be off the air, but it stuck around long enough to reignite awareness of culture and music of the late '50s and early '60s. One transplanted Dane is especially drawn to that music - and not just because he gets to name his jazz combo the Mads Men. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Rita Moreno is such a good actress, you almost believe her when she says she's not a comedian, until you double over in laughter at one of her stories, delivered with expert comic timing. She tells you she doesn't have the voice she had when she played Anita in "West Side Story," then she breaks your heart with an impossibly tender version of "The Folks Who Live on the Hill." [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Andrea Claburn teaches at the California Jazz Academy, and if she's as good a teacher as she is a singer and songwriter, her students are pretty lucky. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Kamasi Washington took his time making his first studio album, but the multitalented tenor saxophonist, composer, bandleader and producer more than proved that "The Epic" was worth waiting for when it premiered in 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A visit to the Cressman household when the whole family is around is likely to involve the arts. Jeff Cressman is a sound engineer and former trombonist with Santana; daughter Natalie is a New York trombonist and vocalist; younger daughter Julianna is a Los Angeles dancer; and Sandy Cressman, the family matriarch, is a master of Brazilian vocal music. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

If there was any doubt that Darren Criss is a San Francisco native, the star of the national tour of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" and the former "Glee" co-star name-checked so many San Francisco people and institutions at Feinstein's at the Nikko on Wednesday night, Nov. 30, he could have been a spokesperson for San Francisco Travel. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In a career whose length doesn't show at all on his eternally youthful mug, Michael Feinstein has established himself as the greatest living champion of the classic American songbook. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Pianist Mike Greensill will host his 26th annual Old First Concerts performance on Sunday, Sept. 4, with a focus on the music of Jerome Kern and Richard Rodgers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Spencer Day, San Francisco's favorite nonresident crooner, doesn't fool himself about nostalgia, in spite of getting ready to unveil a brand-new show this week at Feinstein's focusing on the past 100 years of music. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Barbra Streisand flew into San Francisco the night before her Thursday, Aug. 4, show at San Jose's SAP Center and headed immediately for Chinatown, she told the adoring, nearly-sold-out crowd. Did they know she worked at a Chinese restaurant as a teenager in Brooklyn? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Bassist-bandleader Jeff Denson releases his dazzling new CD "Concentric Circles" Friday, July 29, at Art Boutiki in San Jose, and then spends much of August trucking around Northern California to show off his considerable skills. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

"We can bring crooning back in 2016, " Leslie Odom Jr. declared Saturday night, and no one in the sold-out audience at Walnut Creek's Lesher Center was about to disagree, especially after the croon- and swoon-worthy 80-minute show Odom offered just two weeks after he left the Tony- and Pulitzer-winning Broadway show "Hamilton." [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The setting couldn't be more inviting, but the music is what really draws people to the Valley of the Moon Festival, which launches this weekend at the Hanna Boys Center in Sonoma and continues through the end of the month. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The new PBS "American Masters" documentary on Loretta Lynn, "Still a Mountain Girl," airing on Saturday, March 5, on KQED World, is a valentine to the "queen of country music," but it's also a reminder of how far the genre has strayed from its roots. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The subjects of Martin Scorsese's films over the years have ranged from boxers to taxi-driving sociopaths, goodfellas and Wall Street wolves, but what so many of his films have in common is an almost operatic sensibility, raw emotions emanating from a mythic worldview, where good and evil are easily defined at first, and then disassembled with masterful dexterity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Dan Hicks, the Arkansas-born musician known for his wide-ranging musical and personal style, the wit and outright humor of his songwriting, and his role in the San Francisco folk and '60s rock scene, died Saturday in Mill Valley after a long battle with throat and liver cancer. He was 74. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Dan Hicks, the Arkansas-born musician known for his wide-ranging musical and personal style, the wit and outright humor of his songwriting, and his role in the San Francisco folk and '60s rock scene, died Saturday in Mill Valley after a long battle with throat and liver cancer. He was 74. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It's gonna be a blues Christmas at Feinstein's at the Nikko as Bay Area jazz and blues singer Kim Nalley does an afternoon gig at the club on Sunday, Dec. 20, on the heels of her terrific new CD, "Blues People." [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ok, everybody on your best behavior. The boss is in town at Feinstein's at the Nikko Hotel. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The opening of the Philharmonia Baroque season is always a special occasion in these parts, but this year is especially significant as it marks the 30th anniversary of Nicholas McGegan as the ensemble's inspired music director. It's a milestone that calls for a special season-opening concert, and that's what patrons will get with the group's performance of Scarlatti's "The Glory of Spring" ("La Gloria di Primavera"), a serenata that has not been heard in the Western hemisphere for almost 300 years. The performance will include soprano Suzana Ograjenšek, mezzo Diana Moore, countertenor Clint van der Linde, tenor Nicholas Phan, baritone Douglas Williams and members of the Philharmonia Chorale. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

At first, it seemed like a pipe dream. A weekend of live music in Golden Gate Park, on multiple stages, and it was all going to be free. The hard part was trying to understand the concept. The festival would have a lot of bluegrass music, but it was far too ecumenical to be called merely a bluegrass festival. It would be called the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, and Warren Hellman was footing the entire bill, because he loved bluegrass and because he loved this city. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Kristin Chenoweth is a small woman with a big talent and, as fans of "Wicked" already know, a very big voice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

If you caught the premiere of "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert," you don't need to be told that R&B legend Mavis Staples is still a powerful singer and performer. Her presence in the show's finale was probably the classiest moment of the evening. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cecile McLorin Salvant hasn't been on the scene all that long, but she's already become a favorite of jazz audiences around the world. And that, of course, includes San Francisco, where she will return Saturday, Sept. 19, for concerts at SFJazz. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Forty-two years and counting. That's how long Opera in the Park has been part of the Bay Area fall arts season opening weekend. The Symphony usually kicks things off, but they're on the road this year. But the San Francisco Opera has a full slate planned for the weekend, including the season opener of Verdi's "Luisa Miller" and the bejeweled Opera Ball on Friday, a much-anticipated production of Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Sondheim's Grand Guignol masterpiece, "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" on Saturday, and, of course, Opera in the Park at 1:30 p.m. Sunday in Sharon Meadow at Golden Gate Park. Music Director Nicola Luisotti, above, will conduct. Singers include Diana Damrau, Leah Crocetto, Heidi Stober, Ekaterina Semenchuk, Piotr Beczala, Michael Fabiano and Elliot Moore. Opera in the Park, sponsored by The Chronicle, is free and open to the public. For season information, go to www.sfopera.com. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Wanda Jackson is the queen of rockabilly and one of the greatest American pop musicians of all time. And if she's worn the crown for a few decades, it's because she continues to earn it, over and over again. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Two of the Bay Area's best and most honored jazz artists are heading to Foster City on Sunday to perform at the Peninsula Jewish Community Center. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Jake Shimabukuro single-handedly made the ukulele hip again. More to the point, though, he has over the years demonstrated repeatedly the instrument's previously unrealized flexibility. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Nickel Creek's Sean and Sara Watkins have revived old-time radio bluegrass hours with the Watkins Family Hour, with some of the biggest names in bluegrass and folk music crowding the stage, as they'll do this weekend at Freight & Salvage in Berkeley. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Columbian singer Juanes is an international superstar, not only because of his music, but because of his tireless activism. He's sold more than 15 million albums over his long career, has racked up several shelves of Latin Grammys and other awards, and he's still a young guy. He started his first band when he was only 15, but it lasted long enough to put out five albums. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The family of singer Amy Winehouse intended us to look beyond the tabloid headlines, her tragic early death and even her career in the exhibition "Amy Winehouse: A Family Portrait." For a while, we almost do, but the significance and effectiveness of the exhibit comes from the inevitable refraction of the photos and artifacts of her early life by what we already know about Winehouse. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For the public, especially in her final years, Amy Winehouse was a train wreck waiting to happen, which happened with her death at the fabled age of 27 in 2011. No matter how publicly she lived out her tragedies onstage, Winehouse was one of the great voices of our age. As gifted as she was with songs like "Back to Black," go listen to her earlier music to hear how deeply she was influenced by great African American singers like Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughn. She was an equally brilliant songwriter, as was immediately evident in her debut CD, "Frank." [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Denis Leary's new sitcom, "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll," would have been everything he hopes it could be if he'd made it 20 years ago. Maybe even earlier. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Chromeo: The Canadian electronic music duo made up of David "Dave 1" Macklovitch and Patrick "P-Thugg" Gemayel describes itself as "the only successful Arab-Jewish partnership since the dawn of human culture." The harmony extends to the music on the group's new album, "White Women," which seamlessly brings together slick '80s influences and futuristic dance beats with a deft modern touch. The Glitch Mob and Com Truise also perform. 7:15 p.m. Friday, May 29. $45. Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley, 2001 Gayley Road, Berkeley. www.ticketmaster.com. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

People make documentaries about musicians all the time, and some of them are rich with insight. But even among the best of the bunch, few are as thorough about the artist’s music as Alex Gibney’s “Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown,” airing Monday on HBO. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The San Francisco Symphony's belated centennial celebration of Benjamin Britten comes to a triumphant end this weekend with a stunning semistaged production of the composer's first great opera success, "Peter Grimes." The production is sure to make Britten believers out of those not already convinced by the two earlier programs in this glorious season-ending series. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Apparently taking a cue from Pharrell Williams, Spencer Day is happy these days and hopes that is reflected in his forthcoming CD, "Daybreak." [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]