At JazzFest, Pops will revive Dizzy's spirit

Dizzy Gillespie (above) will be celebrated at JazzFest. (File/1965)

It's growing into one of Boston's new rites of summer: For the third year running, the Boston Pops this month is holding its annual JazzFest, a series of special concerts in which leading lights of jazz partner with the orchestra in the delicate exercise of merging symphonic and improvisational sensibilities.

This year's program will find the spirit of John Birks Gillespie - known to all as Dizzy Gillespie, trumpeter extraordinaire and a central figure of jazz history who died in 1993 - hovering benevolently over Symphony Hall as a passel of his most distinguished apprentices honor the stage.

It begins Tuesday and Wednesday with Arturo Sandoval, the Cuban trumpeter whose astonishing versatility - classical to Latin to pop - makes him a perfect fit for this band-meets-orchestra collaboration. Sandoval famously owes his American career to Gillespie, who was one of the first jazzmen to embrace the Afro-Cuban idiom. Sandoval befriended him when the older man once visited Cuba, and Gillespie then helped him become established after he defected to the United States.

And later this month, the Dizzy Gillespie All-Stars, an alumni band that for the past 10 years has dedicated itself to cultivating Gillespie's work, performs two shows with the orchestra (June 21-22). The group is as fierce an ensemble as you could put together in jazz today, with longtime Dizzy associates James Moody (saxophone) and Slide Hampton (trombone) alongside younger luminaries like Cyrus Chestnut (piano).

Though Gillespie is probably as close as there is in jazz to a household name, with the passage of time there is a constant need to protect and disseminate his legacy and that of his great contemporaries, Sandoval says from his home in Miami.

"We shouldn't take it for granted," he says. "It's the best art form created in the last century. We need help, we need all kinds of support to keep that music alive. I'm trying my best to keep that legacy for my hero, my mentor, and his music."

Sandoval emulates Gillespie's example by carrying his trumpet into virtually any setting and illuminating it with a tone and voice that are distinctly his own. Gillespie was at the heart not only of the jazz transition from swing to bebop, but also of the early globalization of the genre, playing in the New York mambo scene of the 1940s and introducing Middle Eastern exotica on classics like "A Night in Tunisia."

In something of a reverse journey, Sandoval can be found working in the core Afro-Cuban tradition, as on his latest album, "Rumba Palace" - or anywhere else from smooth jazz to big-band swing to film soundtracks or Mozart.

In keeping with this restlessness, Sandoval is suitably coy when asked to preview his Pops engagement. "Oh, it's good music. Music from the heart, trying to reach other hearts," he offers with a mischievous laugh, before growing a bit more specific.

"We've got a lot of beautiful arrangements for my group plus orchestra," he says. "It's a kind of symphonic jazz, but there are still some open places where we can just go and blow. It's a good sound because you can bring a little of both worlds together."

Ultimately, jazz and classical orchestra are a complicated combination. Though many jazz musicians have looked to string sections or other orchestral groups to add texture and feeling, and some have explored the intersection more formally, the core difference between symphonic narration and jazz's improvisational essence has gotten the better of many a good idea.

But bassist John Lee, who played with Dizzy Gillespie throughout the 1980s and is now the executive director of the alumni band, says Gillespie himself sought to break down the boundaries.

"We used to do quite a few of these shows, with a small jazz band set up next to the orchestra, playing some of Dizzy's classic tunes," Lee says. Over the years, Gillespie had commissioned orchestral arrangements from the likes of trombonist J.J. Johnson, for "A Night in Tunisia"; saxophonist Frank Foster, for "Tin Tin Deo"; and Canadian classical composer Robert Farnon, for "Con Alma."

"It helps that Dizzy's music really is accessible," Lee says. "There's a little something for everybody. He used to love fusing samba and bossa nova, have a funky number for the kids. . ."

Lee says he appreciates the chance to revisit the less-known orchestral side of Gillespie with an orchestra of the caliber of the Pops - as well as to reach out to an audience that sometimes knows little about jazz. He recalls by way of example a time the All-Stars performed with the Handel and Haydn Society: "I still meet people who got their introduction to jazz that day," he says. "It's very inspiring to hear that."