Ford wants us to “Leave Our Worries Behind” in (another) sexist ad; Tina Fey responds to her Internet critics with a hilarious comeback; the women have been “leaning in” for centuries before Sheryl Sandberg; Aretha Franklin turns 71; and Helen Mirren champions women in film, behind the camera.

On the evening of June 15, 1933, in Chicago, Illinois, an all-white male orchestra, led by a German conductor, played music composed by a 46-year-old black woman—a breakthrough thanks to the gifted Florence Beatrice Price.

Every year, “The Jazz Nativity” presents a collation of jazz greats adorning Christmas carols with improvizations. The finale, ‘Deck the Halls,’ has been compared to ‘Peter and the Wolf’ because you distinctly hear each instrument riffing. So many styles: Benny Goodman–style swing, bebop, Latin, and (on the show’s CD), a rather far-out electronic vocal . . .

“Flamin’ Amy” Coleman has red hair and a voice “bigger than God.” Here, to inaugurate WVFC’s series “Days of Their Lives”—profiles of accomplished women with unusual jobs—is a peek into the everyday world of a chanteuse.

“Ohmigod, I just finished having dinner with the archbishop of La Cattedrale di San Marco Argentano, in his quarters. Eleven nuns cooking, cleaning, serving his every need. I just can’t help thinking, “What’s a nice Jewish girl like me doing in a place like this?”

Natasha Trethewey’s views on the healing power of poetry; Debora Spar’s theory about women caught in a “purgatory of perfection”; a 1956 look at women as bosses; the discovery that 73% of speaking roles in film and television belong to men (yikes!); and fun with the new “Middle-Aged Diva,” Terisa Griffin, covering Adele.

Not sing? How can someone go through life never singing? I’ve spent many years as a singer, pianist, composer, and voice teacher, and I’ve never met someone who really couldn’t learn to carry a tune.

The crowd Jonathan Coulton draws is as odd and compelling as his songs: Most would look right at home in a Diane Arbus photo. They know all the words. They sing along. They dress like zombies. A Coulton show is where you fit in if you don’t fit in. I felt right at home.

Kitty Wells’s success back in 1952 blasted away the music industry’s bias (“female country singers won’t sell records”)—and showed today’s female country stars that there could be a place for them at the top of the charts.

This week’s blogs celebrated a 14-year-old’s successful petition against impossible beauty standards; provided a defense of Singledom; took a judicious look at “having it all”; and extolled the joys of creativity and compassion.

What’s the female equivalent of a dirty old man? “Dirty old lady” doesn’t have quite the same ring—but, whatever it’s called, I think I became one the other day. (What I’m thinking is more salacious than “cougar.”)

Now in her late fifties, Mary Karr has been transformed, by faith and pure grit, into a professor, a poet, a memoirist, a responsible mother. And now—further transformation—a singer and songwriter.

For expressive-aphasia patients, the path back to speech requires some 70 to 80 hours of intensive music therapy, declares noted neurologist Oliver Sacks. “But to regain language, one would give one’s soul.”

Can you be an overnight sensation at age 55? If anyone can, it’s surely Etta Britt. After a lifetime as a backup vocalist, she’s out with a debut album, “Out of the Shadows.”

LaDonna Adrian Gaines helped form the music we lived with, the stuff we maybe secretly sing in the shower.