A Celebration of Diz and Miles

About “A Celebration of Diz and Miles”

On his second live trio album, A Celebration of Diz and Miles, jazz pianist Mike Longo pays tribute to two of the greatest jazz trumpet players of all time, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. Longo played extensively with Gillespie for a quarter-century, and jammed onstage with Davis during shared club dates in New York City (three-sets-a-night for nine-weeks) in 1969 and 1970.

Longo is backed by renowned jazz stalwarts Paul West on bass and Ray Mosca on drums. The most remarkable aspect of this new live album is that it is completely intuitive as well as being 99-percent improvisational (except for the basic melody statements). Since Longo has played many times with West and Mosca in many band settings over the past four decades, and since the material was well-known, the trio did not rehearse. “I just showed up with a list of tunes. Even the intros and endings are improvised,” Mike states. “We hadn’t even planned to do an album, but at the last minute my producer, Bob Magnuson, decided to record it.”

The concert appropriately took place at the John Birks Gillespie Auditorium at the Baha’i Center in New York City, and the album contains highlights from two completely different (TAKE OUT HYPHEN BETWEEN THE WORDS “completely” and “different”) sets performed June 26, 2012. This is free-wheelin’, deep-exploratory, impulsive, instinctual live jazz at its best, based in be-bop traditions, but always pushing into new territory. “Jazz audiences expect every concert, each set, to be something new, fresh and exciting, and my goal is to deliver that,” Longo states. “These tunes will never be played again exactly like they were that night.”