When Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and their ideal rhythm section gathered in Toronto’s Massey Hall in 1953, bebop was the lingua franca of jazz. They had made it so. After 1946, Gillespie and Parker went their own ways, reuniting for occasional engagements but leading separate musical lives. Bud Powell, who was present with them at the creation, functioned in a mental fog that sometimes lifted to disclose the genius that made him the hero and inspiration of virtually all young jazz pianists, and some not so young. Max Roach continued to raise the bar of excellence for drummers, on an off with Parker through the Forties and early Fifties, but also with Stan Getz, Coleman Hawkins and Miles Davis. Charles Mingus, a titan on the bass, came roaring out of the West in 1950, his massive energy propelling him into the center of the New York scene and the company of Parker. The reunion of Gillespie, Parker, Powell and Roach that May night on the Massey Hall stage produced perfection.