Quintet of the Year

Geoffrey Haydon explores the legendary "Massey Hall concert" - the night inoronto in May 1953 when five of the most creative and influential jazzusicians of all time took the stage together, for the only time in theirives: Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus and Maxoach. Though the evening began inauspiciously, with no real rehearsal, theall less than half full, and Charlie Parker turning up with a white plasticaxophone, nearly 50 years later the CD of the...
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Geoffrey Haydon explores the legendary "Massey Hall concert" - the night inoronto in May 1953 when five of the most creative and influential jazzusicians of all time took the stage together, for the only time in theirives: Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus and Maxoach. Though the evening began inauspiciously, with no real rehearsal, theall less than half full, and Charlie Parker turning up with a white plasticaxophone, nearly 50 years later the CD of the concert is still selling -ntitled, with little exaggeration, "The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever".;"uintet of the Year" is in the same tradition as Ashley Kahn's books on theaking of "Kind of Blue" and "A Love Supreme". Geoffrey Haydon traces theives of the five jazzmen from their beginnings in music to when they boardedhe plane for Canada, and then afterwards, whether to civil rights activismr tragically early death, to show how their stories dramatised for the worldhe condition of black artists in America. He recreates theever-to-be-repeated occasion of that remarkable concert itself, from the