JazzSet with Dee Dee Bridgewater

For his uncompromising and serious music, the 2011 Newport Jazz Festival was eager to present Charles Lloyd. He could bring any group he wanted, they told him. Lloyd said yes, and that he would bring Sangam, an East-West trio with one CD and few performances on the schedule. It was a coup!

Roy Hargrove's sets are all music, no banter.

More than 90 years ago, on April 29, 1922, Jean-Baptiste "Toots" Thielemans was born in Brussels. An organization formed to celebrate his landmark birthday, TOOTS90 is presenting a series of eight concerts, featuring Thielemans' quartet and special guests Kenny Werner on piano and Oscar Castro-Neves and Philip Catherine on guitar. All take place in Belgium, tracing a route from Antwerp to Gent, Brussels, Hasselt, Brugge, Liège and Dinant.

Two years ago, Ben Williams won the Thelonious Monk International Bass Competition at the Kennedy Center in his hometown of Washington, D.C. Dee Dee Bridgewater knows, because she sang with Williams that night. Only months before, he'd earned his Masters at the Juilliard School of Music. As the winner, Ben Williams received $20,000, a recording contract with Concord Music Group and a future booking at the Kennedy Center.

Arturo O'Farrill is at the center of a dynasty between his father, composer Chico O'Farrill (1921-2001), and his son Adam, on trumpet here today. Zack, a younger son, plays drums, while Arturo's wife, Alison Deane, is a classical pianist and professor at City College in New York.