Initially, the new music offended some traditionalists, but its infectious energy soon brought it into the mainstream. Gillespie eventually became the elder statesman of American jazz. His prominence rested as much on his virtuosity as on his role as an originator of bebop.

Trained in the realist tradition of Soviet art, Gillespie's Russian - born portraitist, Marc Klionsky, settled in the United States in 1974.

Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, gift of the estate of Aron Chilewich.