Mario Rivera (musician) City at the age of 67. With Junior Cook With Dizzy Gillespie With Eddie Palmieri With Tito Puente & Eddie Palmieri With The Brian Lynch/Eddie Palmieri Project Mario Rivera (musician) Mario Rivera (July 22, 1939 - August 10, 2007) was a musician, composer and arranger. He was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Although best known as a saxophonist, Rivera doubled on all saxophones family (soprano, alto, tenor and baritone), but he lived as a multi-instrumentalist mastering instruments as C flute, G flute, piccolo, trumpet, piano, vibraphone, melodica, drums, tambora, timbales, bongó, and congas. Rivera was 22 years old when
Dizzy Gillespie a session led by Coleman Hawkins with Gillespie as a featured sideman on February 16, 1944 (Apollo), the first formal recording of bebop. He appeared in recordings by the Billy Eckstine band and started recording prolifically as a leader and sideman in early 1945. He was not content to let bebop sit in a niche of small groups in small clubs. A concert by one of his small groups in New York's Town Hall on June 22, 1945 presented bebop to a broad audience; recordings of it were released in 2005. He started to organize big bands in late 1945.