Norah Jones Play on

Hear Music is a small group of passionate music lovers creating CDs that help people discover all the great music out there. We came up with the idea for Artist’s Choice CDs because we always wanted to know what our favorite artists were listening to. We’re very grateful to Norah Jones for making this a terrific project. We caught up with Norah Jones in New York City where she took some time to sit down and talk to us about the musical influences in her life — the songs she heard in the car when she was a kid, the importance of Ray Charles, and why she loves the sound of Levon Helm’s voice. Spend an hour with Norah Jones’ record collection.

Multiple Grammy Award winner, Norah Jones, plays an exclusive sold-out show at the world-famous Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London. This wonderfully intimate live performance film sees Jones return to the piano, accompanied on stage by drummer Brian Blade and bassist Chris Thomas to form a classic jazz trio…

Norah Jones took liberty with her blockbuster success to set out on a musical walkabout, spending a good portion of the decade following 2004's Feels Like Home experimenting, either on her own albums or on a variety of collaborations. Day Breaks, released four years after the atmospheric adult alternative pop of the Danger Mouse-produced Little Broken Hearts, finds Jones returning home to an extent: it, like her 2002 debut Come Away with Me, is a singer/songwriter album with roots in pop and jazz, divided between originals and sharply selected covers.

Norah Jones took liberty with her blockbuster success to set out on a musical walkabout, spending a good portion of the decade following 2004's Feels Like Home experimenting, either on her own albums or on a variety of collaborations. Day Breaks, released four years after the atmospheric adult alternative pop of the Danger Mouse-produced Little Broken Hearts, finds Jones returning home to an extent: it, like her 2002 debut Come Away with Me, is a singer/songwriter album with roots in pop and jazz, divided between originals and sharply selected covers.

Multiple Grammy Award winner, Norah Jones, plays an exclusive sold-out show at the world-famous Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London. This wonderfully intimate live performance film sees Jones return to the piano, accompanied on stage by drummer Brian Blade and bassist Chris Thomas to form a classic jazz trio…

The genius of their first special was how it favored neither man's immediate, obvious specialty: Nelson is, of course, a country music icon, while Marsalis is one of the nation's foremost jazzmen, but for that show, they met in the middle and played some blues. This time, in taking on the Charles songbook, they allow themselves to hopscotch all over the melodic map, as he did. Charles was, of course, the "genius of soul," but he was also a musical journeyman who experimented in pop, blues, jazz, and country (most famously on his classic Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music albums). And they don't restrict themselves to Charles' own compositions, just songs he performed throughout his career.

As a songwriter and performer, Willie Nelson played a vital role in post-rock & roll country music. Although he didn't become a star until the mid-'70s, Nelson spent the '60s writing songs that became hits for stars like Ray Price ("Night Life"), Patsy Cline ("Crazy"), Faron Young ("Hello Walls"), and Billy Walker ("Funny How Time Slips Away"), as well as releasing a series of records on Liberty and RCA that earned him a small but devoted cult following.