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 1947. He and his big bands, with arrangements provided by Tadd Dameron, Gil Fuller, and George Russell, popularized bebop and made him a symbol of the new music. His big bands of the late 1940s also featured Cuban "rumberos" Chano Pozo and Sabu Martinez, sparking interest in Afro-Cuban jazz. He appeared frequently as a soloist with Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic. In 1948, Gillespie was involved in a traffic accident when the bicycle he was riding was bumped by an automobile. He was slightly injured and found that he could no longer hit the B-flat above high C. He