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
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,