Dizzy Gillespie's State Department Tour
Scott Robinson plays the first movement of his one man, two hundred instrument symphony tonight at Hunter College, free, seven years into a piece he figures will take twenty. Dave Holland turns eighty today and his first box set, "Freedom Call," lands tomorrow on Edition Records.
LioraSeven years of work, more than two hundred instruments, one man playing all of them. Tonight he plays the first thirteen minutes out loud. Today's record is a bassist's first box set. Later, Athens, 1956. It's Thursday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Thursday, October 1st. This is The Daily Quintet. I'm Liora. Five stories from the world of jazz, in about ten minutes. Here we go.
One. The Lead: Writing in DownBeat under his own byline, the 67 year old saxophonist Scott Robinson
LioraScott Robinson is sixty seven, and he is building an orchestra nobody could ever put on a stage.
He told it himself in DownBeat this week, under his own byline. His question: what would a two hundred piece orchestra including three contrabass saxophones and a nine foot Philippine temple drum sound like? I've been trying for seven years to find out.
On the seven years: Well, I am a very slow person.
The method is eight rules. Forty five minutes a day, every day he is home. No cut and paste, so if he needs seventeen cymbal crashes he records each one. Rule six: no click track, autotune, sampling or AI. Every part is played on a real instrument.
The first movement is finished. Thirteen minutes, all of it him.
LioraIt can never be played live. There is no score, and he says there aren't enough of these instruments in the world.
Tonight is a playback. Seven o'clock, Hunter College's Lang Recital Hall in Manhattan. A hundred and forty four seats, free and open to the public.
The piece is "Reach For Tomorrow." He says the title took on extra significance after a six hour cancer surgery. His sign off: Should have started sooner. Wish me luck.
Two. Listen to This: Dave Holland's "Freedom Call," which Edition Records dates 2 October 2026
LioraToday's record is a box, out tomorrow.
"Freedom Call," Dave Holland. Edition Records prints the release date as the second of October. Six LPs, three CDs, previously unreleased live recordings from three of his bands. Sextet, Unity. Quintet, Synergism. Prism, Freedom.
The label says the timing coincides with his eightieth birthday. The National Endowment for the Arts gives his date of birth as the first of October, 1946. So the birthday is today.
Here is the tip. The label prints no recording date and no room for any of it, only that the performances are live. So listen to the bands and not the dates.
LioraOne more, in the company's own handwriting. December 22nd, 1947, Victor Studio 2 in New York. The Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra cuts "Cubana be," and the Victor ledger line, as the archive has it: Featuring Chano Pozo, congo drums.
Coming up on The Bridge: Dizzy Gillespie's band plays Athens days after a riot at an American office, and a senator back home calls the music pure noise. Sekou has the story.
Three. The Bridge: Dizzy Gillespie's band plays Athens days after a riot at an American office
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Sekou tells it, I ask the questions. Sekou, where are we?
SekouAthens, Greece. May 1956. On the 8th, Britain announces it will execute two Greek Cypriots it calls terrorists. On the 9th, rioters in Athens throw rocks at an American office, the U.S. Information Service. Why an American office? The accounts differ: Cyprus and America's backing of Britain, or America's support for the Greek government.
Days later, a jazz band from the United States comes to town, paid for by the State Department. Its leader is Dizzy Gillespie, in the State Department's words "America's first jazz ambassador." Quincy Jones, just twenty-three, put the band together and directs it. Gillespie later called it a deliberate mix: Black and white, men and women. Between May 12th and 21st, they play Athens.
LioraWhy is the State Department paying for a jazz band?
SekouA congressman from Harlem suggested it. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., a jazz fan. The program's own aims, in a 1956 document for the Senate, include "refuting Communist propaganda that the United States is a nation of cultural barbarians."
The first half of the show is a history lesson, planned by a jazz scholar, Marshall Stearns. Spirituals. African drum rhythms. Dixieland. Ellington and Basie, note for note. The second half is Dizzy's own modern music.
They opened in Iran in late March, then Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey and Yugoslavia. In Ankara, by Stearns's account, Gillespie would not play until the street children outside the gates were let in. He had come, he said, to play for all the people.
LioraAll the people. So who comes in Athens?
SekouOne show in Athens, as Gillespie remembered it, was for students only. Marshall Stearns, who designed the concert format, wrote that the students jeered at first. Then they went quiet. Then they roared. Hats and jackets flew. Afterward, he wrote, they carried Gillespie out on their shoulders, chanting his name, and held up traffic.
Gillespie wrote that the band was told later who these students were. The same people who had thrown the rocks.
SekouNow look at where that account comes from. Stearns wrote it in the liner notes of an LP sold as a souvenir of the tour, Dizzy in Greece. The record was not made in Greece. It was recorded in New York, in June 1956 and April 1957. The American embassy in Athens, by one historian's reading of its reports, called the concerts a "relative non-success."
LioraAnd how did it go over at home?
SekouThat summer, the program's money came before the appropriations committees. On July 9th, Theodore Streibert, who coordinated the program, asked the Senate committee to restore the money. Senator Allen Ellender of Louisiana had heard the band. "I heard it at one of the President's big dinners, I think, and I never heard so much pure noise in my life."
Streibert answered, "Well, sir, jazz is one of our resources. It is one of our assets." He also told him, "Not everybody likes jazz. Probably you are among those who do not."
Ellender had voted for the program, he said, because Europeans "thought we were barbarians." His verdict: "I say it does more harm than good to send some of this abroad, in my humble judgment."
LioraTriumph on the record sleeve, pure noise to a senator. It depends who's listening, and who's writing it down.
That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: Jazz Alley in Seattle has one 7:30 set of the Al Di Meola Acoustic Ensemble at $68 with
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket is in Seattle.
Jazz Alley bills "Al Di Meola Acoustic Ensemble - Guitarchitect 2026 Tour." One set, half past seven, doors at six. Sixty eight dollars, which the club says includes a twelve dollar fifty handling fee. As for the rest of the ensemble, the club prints three words: band members TBA.
Now the sweep.
In New Orleans, Preservation Hall has the Preservation All-Stars with Wendell Brunious, four sets, five, a quarter past six, half past seven, a quarter to nine. The Hall prints no price. A ticket is good for one forty five minute performance.
In Nashville, Rudy's Jazz Room runs two. Hot Club Happy Hour at six, curated by Brook Sutton, fourteen in advance. The Rougarou seven piece New Orleans brass band at nine, fifteen.
LioraIn New York, the Jazz Gallery has the Roy Hargrove Big Band, monthly residency, seven and nine, thirty eight fifty. The Gallery names no player for tonight.
Two rooms are out. The Regattabar publishes no calendar we could read, and Jazz St. Louis starts its season November 4th.
Five. One More Note: October 1, 1940: Duke Ellington and Jimmy Blanton cut four bass and piano duets in
LioraOctober 1st, 1940. Eighty six years ago today in Chicago, Duke Ellington and his bass player cut four sides with nobody else in the room. The archive calls all four a bass and piano duet.
"Pitter panther patter." "Body and soul." "Sophisticated lady." "Mr. J. B. blues."
On the first, the composer credit off the disc label is Ellington alone. On the last, Ellington and Jimmy Blanton together. The bass player's name, on an Ellington label.
The library will play you both.
And today a bass player turns eighty.
Outro
LioraThat's the Quintet. If today's show earned it, follow The Daily Quintet wherever you listen.
The Daily Quintet is an AI-crafted production, researched and checked by humans. Every listing you heard came from the venue or the festival's own organizer.
That's your Thursday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.