Dizzy Gillespie Watrous describes his performance style: Wynton Marsalis summed up Gillespie as a player and teacher: Gillespie's trademark trumpet featured a bell which bent upward at a 45-degree angle rather than pointing straight ahead as in the conventional design. According to Gillespie's autobiography, this was originally the result of accidental damage caused by the dancers Stump and Stumpy falling onto the instrument while it was on a trumpet stand on stage at Snookie's in Manhattan on January 6, 1953, during a birthday party for Gillespie's wife Lorraine. The constriction caused by the bending altered the tone of the instrument, and Gillespie
Sarah Gillespie JAZZA Festival for the Free Palestine Movement. Reviewing "In the Current Climate", "The Jazz Breakfast" wrote: "The personal life and the sociopolitical one are blended with references to everything from the Dow Jones and the Hang Index to John the Baptist and Zeus. For "How The West Was Won", Gillespie sings an imaginary first person song of Shaker Aamer, the remaining British prisoner in Camp X-Ray". In 2012 Gillespie released a 16-minute narrative music project, "The War on Trevor." The piece charts the travails of a Londoner (Trevor) suspected of various crimes ranging from public indecency and infidelity to terrorism,