Gil Fuller & the Monterey Jazz Festival Orchestra featuring Dizzy Gillespie Gil Fuller & the Monterey Jazz Festival Orchestra featuring Dizzy Gillespie Gil Fuller & the Monterey Jazz Festival Orchestra featuring Dizzy Gillespie is an album by composer, arranger and conductor Gil Fuller featuring trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie recorded in 1965 and originally released on the Pacific Jazz label. The album was rereleased on CD combined with Fuller's "Night Flight" (Pacific Jazz, 1965) on the Blue Note label as "Gil Fuller & the Monterey Jazz Festival Orchestra featuring Dizzy Gillespie & James Moody" in 2008. The Allmusic review called the album "A bit of a disappointment... the big band is mostly heard
Dizzy Gillespie East which was extremely well received internationally and earned him the nickname "the Ambassador of Jazz". During this time, he also continued to lead a big band that performed throughout the United States and featured musicians including Pee Wee Moore and others. This band recorded a live album at the 1957 Newport jazz festival that featured Mary Lou Williams as a guest artist on piano. In the late 1940s, Gillespie was also involved in the movement called Afro-Cuban music, bringing Afro-Latin American music and elements to greater prominence in jazz and even pop music, particularly salsa. Afro-Cuban jazz is based