Allen Toussaint recently rounded out some concert dates in Europe with a set at the Jazz Cafe in London this past Sunday. He and his recent Nonesuch debut album, The Bright Mississippi, are the focus of an encore broadcast of Words & Music from Studio-A, from New York NPR member station WFUV. "There is no separating Allen Toussaint from New Orleans or the Crescent City from his music," says WFUV's Claudia Marshall her introduction to the episode, "and on his latest album, Allen looks even further into his hometown history, paying tribute to the forefathers of jazz."

Shortly after the album's release this spring, Allen spoke with WFUV's music director Rita Houston about the music on and the making of the album, working with producer Joe Henry, and the stellar group of musicians Henry assembled for the project: clarinetist Don Byron, trumpeter Nicholas Payton, guitarist Marc Ribot, bassist David Piltch, and percussionist Jay Bellerose, with pianist Brad Mehldau and saxophonist Joshua Redman each joining in for a track.

For the "Music" part of the show's title, Toussaint offers live-in-studio solo performances of Duke Ellington's "Solitude," which appears on the new album, plus the classic "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?" (You can hear the Preservation Hall Jazz Band perform their own version of the latter on the 2005 Nonesuch release Our New Orleans, a benefit album supporting Habitat for Humanity's post-Katrina reconstruction efforts, on which Toussaint a track as well.)

Listen to the episode or the individual performances now at npr.org.