New jazz albums with tie-ins to poetry, Puerto Rico, and Gustav Holst's 'The Planets'

With an excellent cast and sharp direction and choreography, this sci-fi homage is a happy marriage of clever nostalgia, shiny new music, and sheer fun for just about any age.

Rather than rehashing what's wrong with 'Chess,' I'll describe why it's still possible to enjoy the Gallery Players' production. The music is perhaps the most advanced artistic evolution of glossy '80s pop. And while I'm sure there are some curmudgeons out there who weren't fans of ABBA's sunny sound, Andersson and Ulvaeus were brilliant songwriters, master craftsmen not only of shiny dance tunes but also of lovely songs of love and loss.

Plagued by indecision about the design of his new commission, an architect continually puts off committing to anything, in favor of obsessively researching the former inhabitants of the neighborhood.

The young Danish piano trio makes a smashing U.S. concert debut upon the release of their first album, with music by Schubert, Shostakovich, and Dvořák.

The Brazilian pianist is a master of infusing improvisational virtuosity into the spirit of a song, whether's it's by Jobim or The Doors, an original, or a Broadway classic from 'Man of La Mancha.'

Bach's contrapuntal masterpiece took flight in the hands of one of the world's premiere viol consorts.

The celebrated musician-scholar and eminence grise of the viol offers representative pieces of what can be broadly termed the "Musica Nova" movement of the 16th and 17th centuries in Italy, France, England, Germany, Spain, and Portugal. But you don't need experience with or knowledge of early music to appreciate the beauty, and the consummate expertise, of these performances.

With just four chairs and a keyboard director Scott Guthrie leads a full-tilt cast of five crisply through the sharp and funny series of twists and turns that make this epitome of self-referential shows shine.

The Brazilian jazz pianist goes full-tilt from the start, with dense and intense rhythms, indeed a florid, Lisztian intricacy, on "To Each His Dulcinea." One listen to Elias's substitutions on the theme and you know she's playing with a full quiver of creativity as well as a twinkle in her eye.