Calling all Jazz buffs! All aboard the "A" Train! Dizzy Gillespie and His Jazz Giants perform at Magnolia Gardens as part of Spoleto 1984. The ensemble includes greats Jon Hendrick, J.C. Heard, George Duvivier, and Tommy Flanagan. As the concert progresses, the lineup expands to include Kenny Burrell, Jimmy Heath, and Jon Faddis. Check the Side Notes to learn more about the immense talent performing in this sunny, steamy park-like setting at beautiful Magnolia Gardens!
Dizzy joins the ensemble for some jazz standards. Later, Dizzy conducts and plays with the South Carolina Festival All Stars!
Were you there at this sterling moment in musical history? If not, here is your chance to capture the moment! If you were there, could you see yourself in the audience?
Side Notes:
- Dizzy Gillespie - John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie | National Endowment For the Arts.
- John Carl Hendricks (September 16, 1921 – November 22, 2017), known professionally as Jon Hendricks, was an American jazz lyricist and singer. He is one of the originators of vocalese, which adds lyrics to existing instrumental songs and replaces many instruments with vocalists, such as the big-band arrangements of Duke Ellington and Count Basie. He is considered one of the best practitioners of scat singing, which involves vocal jazz soloing. Jazz critic and historian Leonard Feather called him the "Poet Laureate of Jazz", while Time dubbed him the "James Joyce of Jive". Al Jarreau called him "pound-for-pound the best jazz singer on the planet—maybe that's ever been".
- Tommy Flanagan American jazz pianist and composer - National Endowment for the Arts.
- J. C. Heard 1918 – 1988 - Percussion Master: Syncopated Times.
- Kenny Burrell - One of the leading exponents of straight-ahead jazz guitar, Kenny Burrell is a highly influential artist whose understated and melodic style, grounded in bebop and blues, made him in an in-demand sideman from the mid-’50s onward and a standard by which many jazz guitarists gauge themselves to this day.
- Jimmy Heath 1926 – January 19, 2020, nicknamed Little Bird, was an American jazz saxophonist, composer, arranger, and big band leader. He was the brother of bassist Percy Heath and drummer Albert Heath.
- Jon Faddis - Manhattan School of Music.
- In the 1970s, Dizzy had another band known as The Giants of Jazz which was a jazz all-star group of the early 1970s which featured Art Blakey (drums), Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet), Al McKibbon (bass), Thelonious Monk (piano), Sonny Stitt (alto and tenor sax), and Kai Winding (trombone). They recorded albums for Atlantic Records, Concord Records. and Emarcy Records
- Spoleto Festival USA Program History 1977-2012. Spoleto Festival USA Program History
Page 63- Jazz : Dizzy Gillespie and His Jazz Giants, Danny and Blue Lu Barker and the Jazz Hounds of New Orleans, The South Carolina Festival All Stars, Tommy Flanagan Trio with J.C. Heard and George Duvivier, Jon Hendricks and Co., Ramsey Lewis Trio.
