Gary Burton, Learning to Listen: The Jazz Journey of Gary Burton (Berklee, $27.99 paper). A great jazzman tells his fascinating story with appealingly unselfconscious directness. It’s quite a tale: Burton, who ranks alongside Lionel Hampton, Milt Jackson, and Red Norvo as the most influential of all jazz vibraphonists, more or less invented fusion and is one of a handful of openly gay top-tier jazz soloists. He’s played alongside plenty of other heavy hitters, including George Shearing, Stan Getz, and Pat Metheny, and sketches their personalities as clearly and honestly as he does his own. One of the most readable jazz memoirs ever written (TT).

Hamlet/Saint Joan (Lynn Redgrave Theatre, 45 Bleecker St., closes Feb. 2). Bedlam Theatre Company’s brilliantly original four-person small-scale stagings of two of the greatest of all English-language plays are now being performed in rotating repertory in an off-Broadway house. I raved about the original productions in The Wall Street Journal, as did ever other critic in town. Go, repeatedly (TT).

Hands on a Hardbody (Ghostlight). The original-cast album of the poignant musical version of S.R. Bindler’s 1998 documentary about a low-rent Texas endurance contest, adapted for the stage with uncanny cultural sensitivity by Trey Anastasio, Amanda Green, and Doug Wright. The show’s New York run ended far too soon, but this CD will allow you to hear one of the best pop scores to hit Broadway in recent memory. For the record, I wrote the liner notes, which are adapted from my heartfelt Wall Street Journal review of the show (TT).

Michael Haas, Forbidden Music: The Jewish Composers Banned by the Nazis (Yale, $38). The first full-length history of what happened to the Jewish classical composers who, like Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Schreker, Arnold Schoenberg, and Kurt Weill, ran afoul of the Nazi regime and had their music banned. A powerfully unsettling tale of ideology run amok–and of how Hitler destroyed Austro-German musical culture by trying to ensure its supremacy for all time (TT).

Fairfield Porter: Modern American Master (Parrish Art Museum, 279 Montauk Highway, Water Mill, N.Y., ongoing). For much of his adult life, Fairfield Porter lived and painted in Southampton, and many of his paintings belong to the permanent collection of the Parrish, which is now hanging them regularly rather than sporadically in its new building. Anyone interested in the work of one of America’s most insufficiently recognized modern masters, a lifelong realist who was nonetheless deeply influenced by abstract expressionism, should hasten to Water Mill and partake of this important show (TT).

Giant (Ghostlight, two CDs). The original-cast album of the Public Theater’s 2012 production of the Michael John LaChiusa-Sybille Pearson stage version of Edna Ferber’s novel. I praised it in The Wall Street Journal as “the most important new musical to come along since The Light in the Piazza….Giant tells an all-American tale in a way that is well suited to the present moment. It’s a myth, but an honest one, enacted with high seriousness and great beauty” (TT).

Jim Hall Live! Vol. 2-4 (ArtistShare, three CDs). Previously unreleased recordings made in 1975 by Jim Hall, Don Thompson, and Terry Clarke at the same Toronto gig that produced Jim Hall Live! The latter is by common consent Hall’s best album–a judgment in which I concur–and this set is of identical quality, a priceless cache of wholly involving performances by the greatest living jazz guitarist (TT).

A Picture of Autumn (Mint Theater, 311 W. 43, closes July 27). An ultra-rare American production of N.C. Hunter’s poignant 1951 play about a cash-strapped aristocratic family saddled with an unaffordable country house, beautifully staged by Gus Kaikkonen and acted by a letter-perfect cast. No, you’ve never heard of Hunter, but trust me on this one–he’s in urgent need of revival and revaluation (TT).