After achieving commercial success and aesthetic respect as one of jazz’s towering figures, Duke Ellington often spoke about never speaking about “jazz” again: After 1947, he refused to use that musical-genre tag because, he said, it segregated him and anyone else who made America’s classical music from pure expression.

Quince Productions is gearing up for its seventh annual Full House cabaret series Nov. 18-22, launching it with one of their favorite performers.

David B. Devan, Opera Philadelphia’s general director and president, has a lot to discuss.

At a time when most female pop is Auto-Tuned, Nellie McKay — singer, songwriter, instrumentalist and comedian — is an unorthodox breath of fresh air. London-born but living much of her youth in Pennsylvania (she’s a veteran of the Pocono Youth Orchestra and Phil Woods’ orchestra of promising young players), McKay has explored Tin Pan Alley pop and uneasy-listening jazz. Her music could be self-penned or pulled from the songbooks of Kurt Weill, Peggy Lee and Cole Porter — all with witty lyrics rich in unsentimental, anti-romantic sarcasm or all-around silliness.