Dizzy Gillespie Dizzy Gillespie John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, and singer. Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic and rhythmic complexity previously unheard in jazz. His combination of musicianship, showmanship, and wit made him a leading popularizer of the new music called bebop. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks, and his light-hearted personality provided some of bebop's most prominent symbols. In the 1940s Gillespie, with Charlie Parker, became
Sylvia Brooks Sylvia Brooks Sylvia Brooks is an American jazz singer. Brooks was born as Sylvia Victoria Ippolito in Miami Beach, Florida. Her father, Don Ippolito, was a jazz pianist who has played with various other icons such as Ira Sullivan, Buddy Rich, Peggy Lee, and Dizzie Gillespie, and her mother, Johanna Dordick, was an opera singer, who founded the Los Angeles Opera Theatre. Brooks began her professional life as an actress; in 2009, she began singing Jazz and formed a collaboration with Thomas Garvin who wrote the arrangements for her debut album "Dangerous Liaisons". In 2012, Brooks released her second album,