Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation and WBGO Present Kids Concert, Who Is Louis Armstrong?

The Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation (LAEF) and WBGO’s Kids Jazz Concert Series present world-renowned Jazz/Blues Vocalist Catherine Russell in Who is Louis Armstrong?, an entertaining, engaging and informative, family-friendly program, at The Newark Museum of Art, 49 Washington Street, on Saturday, November 14, 2026, at 1:00 pm.As the daughter of Luis Russell, Louis Armstrong’s longtime musical director, Catherine offers a personal connection to Armstrong’s revolutionary sound.

The free, not “for kids only” concert is also a program of New Jersey Performing Arts Center’s (NJPAC) annual TD James Moody Jazz Festival.

WBGO’s Monifa Brown, host of Saturday Evening Jazz (6:00 – 10:00 pm), will serve as MC for the Kids Concert.

Jazz/Blues vocalist Catherine Russell is a native New Yorker, born into a musical family. Her father, Luis Russell was a legendary pianist/composer and bandleader; and Louis Armstrong's long-time musical director. Her mother Carline Ray, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, toured with the all-female swing orchestra "The International Sweetheart of Rhythm" in the late 1940s. She also worked with pianist/composer Mary Lou Williams, and arranger/band leader Sy Oliver, among many others. Ms. Ray was a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music.

Catherine has released 10 albums as a solo artist, three of which earned Grammy nominations for Best Jazz Vocal Album. She toured and/or recorded as a back-up singer with Steely Dan, David Bowie, Cyndi Lauper, Jackson Browne and Rosanne Cash, among others. She has taught at Jazz@Lincoln Center's Summer Jazz Academy, The Berklee College of Music, The New School, and Michael Feinstein's Songbook Academy as well as teaching private students and master classes.

Admission is free. Contact: https://newarkmuseumart.org

Hailed as one the most influential and popular musicians in modern music, trumpeter/vocalist Louis Armstrong (1901-71) rose out of poverty in New Orleans, and became, in the words of music and cultural critic Albert Murray, “the Prometheus of jazz,” as the genre’s first major instrumental soloist and singer, who invented the art of scat-singing.