Dizzy Gillespie for the Performing Arts. In 2014, Gillespie was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame. 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
Rhondda Gillespie formal studies were at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music under Alexander Sverjensky (where her fellow students included Malcolm Williamson, Richard Farrell and Roger Woodward) and in Britain under Louis Kentner and Denis Matthews. Wilfred Josephs' 14 Studies for Piano, Op. 53 were written for Gillespie, Joy Blech, and Yonty Solomon. Gillespie gave the world premiere of the complete set at the Cheltenham Festival in 1967. She was the second wife of the music critic and musicologist Denby Richards. They married on 29 May 1973, but divorced in 1977. In 1976, for Joseph Horovitz's 50th birthday, Gillespie played his "Jazz Concerto"