Billie Holiday's troubled life colored every phrase she sang, and she brought her listeners to moments of joy that soothed the worst heartache. No matter how lousy a hand life deals you, one song from Billie reminds you that she had it worse and still, somehow, remained beautiful. The woman whose sou

Dreamy, Jazz vocalists, Lush, Sensual, Smoky

Michael Nyman is, in many ways, the prototypical overachieving baby boomer. Born in London at the very beginning of the boom, his first days were spent under a constant threat of German invasion. As a teenager, he studied music and composition at the Royal Academy of Music and at King's College under

Dramatic, Lush, Moody, Pathos

Just before his death in 1991, Miles Davis teamed up with rapper Easy Mo Bee to make a jazz/hip-hop album called "Doo Bop." This wasn't the first time Davis had done something utterly new -- his entire career was devoted to jazz-faring exploration. Playing with such supernovae as Charles Mingus

Bebop, Classical, Composed, Cool, Cool jazz, Electronic, Elegant, Expansive, Fusion, Fuzzy, Hard bop/post-bop, Improvised, Intimate, Loose, Lush, Mathematical, Minimal, Open-ended, Quiet, Sexy, Sincere, Spare, Subtle, Trippy

By all accounts, Peter Tchaikovsky was an emotionally troubled man. He suffered from nervous depression, which was heightened by the constant social presssure to hide his homosexuality. The composer had affairs with women and even married Antonina Miliukova -- with disastrous emotional effects to bot

Dark, Dramatic, Elegant, Grand, Lush, Psychological, Romantic music, Voluminous