In February 2016, a quarter-century after his debut with the pivotal hip-hop duo Organized Konfusion, Queens emcee Pharoahe Monch took a chance, stepping onstage at New York’s Ecstatic Music Festival with Brooklyn’s uproarious PitchBlak Brass Band.

At the dawn of the 1970s, British guitarist John McLaughlin, fresh from recording Miles Davis’ seminal Bitches Brew, reinvented the possibilities of his electrified instrument.

Gregory Porter has played to sold-out houses at Duke Performances twice in recent years, moving into ever-grander venues as his fame grows.

Drummer Brian Blade has an astounding résumé. He played on Bob Dylan’s Time out of Mind, Norah Jones’ Come Away with Me, and Emmylou Harris’ Wrecking Ball.

The rapper Murs and the producer 9th Wonder were raised on different coasts: Murs is a product of South Central Los Angeles, a background that’s informed every aspect of his lyrics, from streetwise storytelling to the bits of Spanish he’s long woven into his lines

Alsarah’s circuitous journey toward stardom began as a double refugee — first from conflict in her native Sudan, then from civil war in neighboring Yemen. After arriving in New York in the mid-1990s, Alsarah turned to music as a living link to her homeland, both as an ethnomusicologist and a singer with a velvety voice and socially conscious lyrics.

Memphis musicians William Bell, Bobby Rush, and Don Bryant are three of this country’s great elder statesmen of soul music.

As a composer and bandleader, five-time GRAMMY winner Maria Schneider deploys her peerless seventeen-piece Maria Schneider Orchestra to test the boundaries between classical music and jazz.

Though she’s not yet reached her thirtieth birthday, Melissa Aldana has already broken several jazz boundaries.

The guitarist Bill Frisell has earned great acclaim, especially during the last decade, for highly conceptual projects, many of which he’s presented at Duke Performances.