True revolutions are never “finished.” They are ongoing and permanent in their power to transfix and transform us. The music of the great innovators of the last century, from Igor Stravinsky to Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, remains as revolutionary today as it was the instant it was conceived.

In the case of the latter two savants, that point is brought home by a spectacular new release, “Town Hall, New York City, June 22, 1945” (Uptown Jazz UPCD-27.51). Any fragment of unheard Bird would be news, but this newly discovered recording is the mother lode: 40 minutes of Parker and Gillespie – who, despite being co-founders of the bop movement, did not record all that much together – live in concert in 1945, the year that bebop first exploded onto the national jazz scene. This was recorded so early in the day for bebop that the show’s master of ceremonies, Symphony Sid Torin, pronounced the trumpeter’s name as “Dizzy Jill-espie.”

For a few years previously, Parker, Gillespie, and a few others – chiefly drummer Kenny Clarke and pianist Thelonious Monk – had begun hearing the new music in their heads and working out the details on their instruments independently of each other. Bebop’s evolution accelerated during the war years, and the music’s pioneers began moving from uptown after-hours clubs in Harlem to the mainstream jazz clubs on 52nd Street. There were two Town Hall concerts starring the Gillespie-Parker band in the spring of 1945, both produced by promoter Monte Kay’s New Jazz Foundation. The first, on May 16, survives only in a series of photographs that grace the CD booklet; the second, thankfully, was recorded.

Parker and Gillespie had only recorded twice together before this, and both poorly pressed studio sessions barely begin to document the majesty of the most auspicious partnership in all of modern jazz. In contrast, the Town Hall performances were supercharged with the fire of recent discovery. Parker’s and Gillespie’s solos were breathtaking – no one ever played higher or with greater clarity than Gillespie or faster and more lucidly than Parker – but the passages they played together were even beyond that. They stop and start together, taking every twist and bend of the melody as a team – a vital reminder that although bebop intensified the role of the soloist, it was first and foremost ensemble music.

In addition to the two headliners, the rhythm section that night included Al Haig, piano; Curly Russell, bass; and a very young Max Roach, drums. They were joined by two guests, Don Byas and drummer Big Sid Catlett. The tunes were nearly all Gillespie’s, including two complete originals, “A Night in Tunisia” and the opener “Bebop.” The musicians also played three variations on standards – “Salt Peanuts” (“I Got Rhythm”), “Groovin’ High” (“Whispering”), and Tadd Dameron’s “Hot House” (“What Is This Thing Called Love?”) – and made a brief run through Thelonious Monk’s “52nd Street Theme” as the chaser. Interestingly, none of the selections is based on the blues, although that was a key foundation element of the new music. The lack of blues indicates that this was Gillespie’s gig – Bird was equally featured, but Dizzy, who was far less a specialist in the blues, was calling the shots.

The concert started a half-hour behind schedule, apparently because Parker was characteristically late, so Byas was asked to play on the first tune, “Bebop,” in case Bird didn’t make it. Byas took one solo, which unfortunately was somewhat off-mic. Catlett got such fanfare from Torin that it’s obvious he was much better known to the jazz audience in 1945 than were Gillespie or Parker; he was also the only musician to speak on mic. Catlett led a highly drumcentric reading of “Hot House,” and fully justified the attention – the tune shows how, as jazz moved from clubs to concert halls, such drum solos became more and more important.

Modern jazz would eventually become a long-form music, with vastly extended, even marathon solos, and while the five major cuts here are all seven minutes in length (roughly twice the length of a commercial recording of the day), they also show that Parker and Gillespie were still very much part of the 78 era, in that they had mastered the art of saying a lot in a very short space.

Parker’s entrance into his solo on “Night in Tunisia” was a statement unto itself – in fact, the next year, an incomplete take of Parker playing just that entrance would be released as “Famous Alto Break.” Time – meaning the rhythm section – literally stands still as Parker plays a blinding flurry of notes. Listeners new to this music in 1945, and nearly everyone was, might have heard only chaos, but today we can hear the whole history of jazz, from the “breaks” of Louis Armstrong and King Oliver, flashing forward all the way to Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane.

The CD is the work of Dr. Robert Sunenblick, an American living in Montreal, who, when he isn’t practicing medicine, is chasing down recorded rarities and operating Uptown Records. The venerated bebop field historian Ira Gitler, who annotated the CD’s 32-page booklet, compares Dr. Sunenblick’s discovery of the acetates containing this music to the finding of King Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922 (it’s not an irrelevant comparison: Gillespie was reading up on Egyptology in this period). Along with Mr. Gitler and the British sound restoration specialist Ted Kendall, Dr. Sunenblick has reconstructed both the concert itself and the story of how it happened.

The jazz press reviewed the June 22 event at the time, but mainly complained about the stars – most notably Coleman Hawkins – who never showed up. The current CD is also marred by a major no-show: The second half of the concert, starring the nascent piano star Erroll Garner, both with his trio and in conjunction with headliners Buck Clayton, Don Byas and Pearl Bailey. What’s frustrating is that Dr. Sunenblick is in possession of most of the Garner portion of the program and wanted to release it. (Unlike some labels, especially in Europe, who release newly discovered historical jazz, Uptown Records is a fully legal, non-bootleg operation.) Dr. Sunenblick prevailed upon both Mr. Gitler and me to intercede with Martha Glaser, the late Garner’s notoriously difficult manager, who continues to run his estate. But Ms. Glaser refused to consider the matter or even to discuss it with Dr. Sunenblick.

Perhaps Ms. Glaser will someday see the light and the half-hour or so of Garner material will be released. But I even feel greedy for doing my imitation of Oliver Twist and asking for more, because what we’ve got here is so remarkable. As Torin declared, half to himself, at the end of one tune: “All that pretty music, I [could] stand back there and kill myself!” I can only imagine that the reaction of contemporary listeners will be no less strong, if hopefully not quite so violent.

Essential Bebop Recordings

“Town Hall, New York City, June 22, 1945” is a great introduction to the music of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Whereas latter-day discoveries like the famous Dean Benedetti private recordings of Parker are often only meaningful for scholars, the Town Hall concert can be enjoyed by anybody, even those who have never seriously listened to early bebop. If this is your first album by bebop’s original uber-collaboration, here are a few recommended single-CD packages with which to continue your birth-of-the-bebop exploration:

* Charlie Parker, “Best of the Complete Savoy and Dial Studio Recordings” (SAVOY JAZZ 17120). It’s an awkward title, but these studio sessions done between 1944 and 1948 (for not one but two independent jazz labels, the New York-based Savoy and Los Angeles’s Dial) are the first recordings to document Bird’s greatness in all its glory. Starting with his 1944 breakthrough “Koko” and continuing through such mature masterworks as “Embraceable You,” this set will whet your appetite for the complete eight-CD box of this material.

* Dizzy Gillespie, “Dizzier and Dizzier” (RCA 68517). Gillespie’s RCA recordings of 1946-49 document the period when one of America’s largest entertainment conglomerates determined that modern jazz was at last ready for mainstream conception. Gillespie’s Victor sessions of these years, recorded alongside small combos and big bands alike, represent some of the most perfect distillations of his revolutionary concepts – both in terms of the development of bebop and his equally startling innovations in Latin Jazz.

* “The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever” (PRESTIGE P 24024). The title is no mere hyperbole: In 1953, five of the original bebop pioneers – Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Max Roach, and Charles Mingus – gathered for a remarkable performance at Massey Hall in Toronto. Mingus not only played bass, but also had the foresight to record the concert and release it on his Debut Records label. Even though Parker and Gillespie were no longer working together regularly, they display remarkable empathy for one another in what was to be their last important appearance as a team.