Dizzy Gillespie All-Stars part of Albany's jazz fest

The Albany Riverfront Jazz Festival is a resilient fixture of the area music scene and a pleasant spark to the start of fall for jazz fans. The 18th annual event is set for Saturday at Jennings Landing on the Hudson River and one of the highlights will have the spirit of a true jazz icon hovering over the river as the Dizzy Gillespie All-Stars perform music associated with the legendary trumpeter/composer.

Gillespie, a jazz pioneer, died in 1993 at age 75. His legacy has been carried on by virtually all musicians, but in an official capacity by bands carrying his name and made up of some of the genre's finest players. The all-star group performing in Albany will be a quintet. There is also a big band and a Latin music project under the Dizzy Gillespie name.

The musical director of all three is John Lee, who played electric bass with Gillespie the last 10 years of the trumpeter's life.

"About a year after Dizzy passed away, Dizzy's wife, Lorraine, called me and asked me to do something. Not a ghost band. You can't be a ghost band, because who would be Dizzy?" said Lee. At the time he was also producing albums for the Shanachie label. "I had some nice success with a singer named Jon Lucien. The executive producer said, 'Why don't you do a project that you really want to do from your heart?' I said I'd like to do a tribute album to Dizzy. We did this album with Jon Faddis, Cyrus Chestnut and a few others. People started calling us for gigs. That's how it was born."

The Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band was formed next and the newest project is called the Afro-Latin Experience.

"People know (Dizzy) for the Afro-Cuban music, but he was really the first to incorporate Brazilian stuff, even though Stan Getz gets all the credit because of the 'Girl From Ipanema," a mega-hit in the 1960s, said Lee. "Dizzy was the first to...