Includes liner notes by Hermann Lara.
All tracks have been digitally remastered.
In the early '40s, Dizzy Gillespie joined forces with Charlie Parker and Bud Powell to pioneer a revolutionary new direction in jazz that came to be known as be-bop. In the mid-'40s, Gillespie took his innovations one step further. In what many would term a sacrilegious experiment, he crossbred the popular big-band sound with the contorted rhythms and fiery phrasing of bop jazz. The results, captured on this superb disc, are almost anarchic in their force.
The bandleader's love of Latin music is already a major element here, expressed with a keen ear for melodicism, aggressive dynamics, overlapping and interweaving brass parts, vestiges of swing, and hints of avant-skronk. Gillespie's band plays like a beautifully built train that is careening out of control. Gorgeously lyrical passages ("Milan Is Love" ) alternate with rhythmically propulsive tracks that at times presage the rock-influenced groove-jazz of the '60s ("N'Bani"). Things to come, indeed. An excellent document of one of jazz's supreme innovators and cultural treasures.
