Sherrie Maricle (center) and the DIVA Jazz EnsembleLast night marked the start of the Kennedy Center’s 15th Annual Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival. The event, held in honor of one of the great jazz composers of the last century, brings together some of the country’s finest musicians to celebrate the contribution women have made to the jazz idiom. Tonight, one of the headlining performers is the DIVA Jazz Ensemble, an all-female big…

Every now and then a young musician comes along and accomplishes so much, so quickly, that the rest of us are forced to wonder what we are doing with our lives. That is the position in which we found ourselves when, during a recent interview, we tried to hide our envy while asking Esperanza Spalding what it was like to perform at the White House earlier this year before the President, first lady, and…