The New York Band offered blatant crossover strategies - ballad melodies over a merengue beat, a song with lines in English, a dance routine using Janet Jackson's gestures, strobe lights and smoke.

Keren Ann Keren Ann Zeidel still builds songs around ballad melodies and her serenely languid voice.

In "Tigresa," Mr. Veloso and the band stacked up guitar power chords, a supple ballad melody and triple-time Bahian drumming to make that song simultaneously pensive and tough.

Mr. Marsalis crooned "Reflections" on his trumpet with a small, diffident tone, savoring every turn of the ballad melody.

In one piece, Mr. Sadoc simply stated the gorgeous ballad melody alone on fluegelhorn, and that was enough.

In "When We Were Very Young," Mr. Brubeck wrapped the ballad melody in elaborate Romantic filigrees.

Mr. Lins can thread a ballad melody through jazzy, serpentine chord changes, send an arpeggiated tune bouncing across a samba rhythm or enjoy sunny, basic three-chord patterns.

In "Hollow Life," Mr. Davis even croons a vulnerable ballad melody against a choral backdrop.

His short solo section, on acoustic and electric guitars, encompassed some hard-to-recognize ballad melodies and a Civil War soldiering song; it was shrewd and rather subtle.

His solos, whether ruminating on a whispered ballad melody or jabbing against a beat, have been models for generations of jazz musicians.