Owner James Gaston was sitting at a four-chair circular table in his club on Front Street across from the McLean County Law and Justice Center in downtown Bloomington. It’s been nearly three years since Jazz UpFront opened, and despite the immense pressures of running a live jazz club anywhere in America, jazz is still a staple in his club every Friday and Saturday night.

In 2016 streaming services became the primary way Americans listened to music . But Bloomington-Normal still has three independent record stores, where physical music, mostly vinyl, makes up the vast majority of their sales. Indeed, record stores in the Twin Cities have bucked the current, rising in popularity from a low point about 15 years ago.

The seven-piece Latin-fusion group The BraziLionaires add 50+ pieces to their sound when they merge with the Peoria Symphony Orchestra for their annual Romance Concert.

You might think a piece of classical music composed about a symposium on different philosophers would not be terribly romantic. You'd be wrong.

The Feudin’ Hillbillys . It's a name that conjures both a kind of music and an attitude.

Tom Becker graduated from Stanford (IL) High School. That alone will date him.

What would life be without music for Chris Corkery? “I can’t … ” said Corkery softly, pausing to consider the implications. “Wow … good question. It’s hard for me to even conceptualize that. Music … saved my life in a lot of ways for many years.”

If you grow up in New Orleans, you’re going to absorb the musical legacy of that city.

Emmy Holmes-Hicks caught the fiddle bug by age 4. “An older cousin would visit from Thunder Bay, Ontario,” said Holmes-Hicks. “She played Canadian-style fiddle. There was something that just drew me to that music, so much I was just glued to her and I think my parents noticed that.”

Jeff Wilson of North Street Records in Uptown Normal suggests the new Beatles Christmas box set for the Beatles fan who has everything. The box set was released Dec. 15.