JazzSet with Dee Dee Bridgewater

From the Family Theater at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., it's Renee Rosnes on the left, Bill Charlap on the right and — in Charlap's words — "a unique sound that is the sum of both of us."

Catherine Russell is a lady born to music. Her father, Luis Russell (1902-63), was Louis Armstrong's orchestra leader beginning in the mid-1930s. Her mother, Carline Ray, is a bassist, singer, great all-around musician and a member of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, the 1940s all-woman band that swung as hard as the men. "This Daughter of Jazz Is One Cool Cat," reads the headline of Nat Hentoff's profile for The Wall Street Journal.

From January 1992 to September 2001, Branford Marsalis set the JazzSet pace, hosting 39 new shows a year (now we do 26) from the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band; festivals in Iowa City, Telluride, Pasadena, Mount Hood, Montreal and Brevard, N.C.; the new music festival in Groningen, the Netherlands, and the Havana Jazz Festival in Cuba; clubs from Yoshi's in California to Sculler's and the Regattabar in Boston. WGBH producer Steve Schwartz sent us lots of Boston sets during that first decade, all of them much appreciated.

The Litchfield Jazz Festival leads off with a weeks-long camp for high-school students and New York's finest musicians on the faculty, then climaxes with a two-day festival. This year it's August 11-12 in Goshen, Conn., but here we have two sets from the 2010 festival, featuring two groups with young leaders.

In May, JazzSet host Dee Dee Bridgewater emceed three nights of concerts held at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater as part of the Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival in Washington, D.C. Chihiro Yamanaka and Jane Bunnett opened the first night; they come from Japan and Canada, respectively, and each has a compelling story.