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
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"