Dizzy Gillespie Gillespie left Eckstine's band because he wanted to play with a small combo. A "small combo" typically comprised no more than five musicians, playing the trumpet, saxophone, piano, bass and drums. Bebop was known as the first modern jazz style. However, it was unpopular in the beginning and was not viewed as positively as swing music was. Bebop was seen as an outgrowth of swing, not a revolution. Swing introduced a diversity of new musicians in the bebop era like Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Kenny Clarke, Oscar Pettiford, and Gillespie. Through these musicians, a new vocabulary of musical
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"