The HistoryMakers are presenting An Evening With Quincy Jones, an international impresario, conductor, composer, musical arranger and trumpet virtuoso who will be interviewed by Gwen !fill, host of Washington Week on PBS, where she speaks on politics and policy. Pianist Herbie Hancock will serve as Master of Ceremonies Thursday, September 27, at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The reception begins at 5:30 and the TV taping is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m.
The young composer Primous Fountain III, also a Chicago native, recently finished his 2nd Symphony this summer as a tribute to Quincy Jones - who commissioned the dynamic composition. Written in three movements, the mammoth score has more than a 150 pages.
Composer Fountain said, "I didn't rush myself in creating this music because I wanted it to be worthy of Quincy Jones' great contribution of his musical legacy." Primous Fountain is a graduate of Wendell Phillips High School and DePaul University.
An Evening With Quincy Jones is produced by Julieanna L. Richardson, founder and executive director of The HistoryMakers. The title sponsor is McDonald's Corporation.
Quincy Delightt Jones, Jr. is also a native of Chicago and was born on March 14, 1933. He is planning to celebrate his 75th birthday in 2008. Jones is the eldest son of Quincy Delightt Jones Sr., and Sara. Jones ancestry consists of Cherokee, West African and Welsh.
Jones became interested in music during elementary school and mastered the technique of the trumpet and brass instruments. His family moved to Bremerton, Wa., when he was ten years old, where he attended Garfield High School.
As a teenager, Quincy Jones manifested tremendous talent for performing and writing music. During his mid-teens he met Ray Charles and became a member of his ensemble. In 1951, Jones won a scholarship to the Schillinger House in Boston, but instead he toured with the legendary bandleader Lionel Hampton. He also spent a brief time attending Seattle University. His ability to compose and arrange songs was phenomenal and he demonstrated that significant skill while touring with Lionel Hampton.
When Quincy Jones toured the Middle East and South America, he became fascinated over the elements of musical styles and idioms while touring with the Dizzy Gillespie Band. In fact he was signed to a contract with ABC-Paramount Records that began his recording career, which enabled him to establish his own jazz orchestra. He decided to remain in Europe, particularly in France, where he studied composition with Nada Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen.
Quincy Jones earned great critical acclaim performing at the Paris Olympia and serving as the Music Director at Barclay bisques, the French Distributor of Mercury Records. After establishing another orchestra, Quincy Jones became a jazz giant of Europe and North America, however, the economic situation became terrible and the music situation became disastrous for the orchestra.
Irving Green, president of Mercury Records, provided Jones with finance in order that he could continue his fabulous career. Green, in 1964, gave him the position of vice-president of Mercury Records, a first position for an African musician.
Following his discovery of Lesley Gore and promoting and producing her into international fame in 1963, film director Sidney Lumet invited him to compose the first of the more than 33 major films he scored in 1964. The movie he scored was The Pawnbroker. Hollywood now realized that Quincy Jones was an ingenious musician and invited him to the West Coast. After resigning from Mercury Records his amazing career skyrocketed into the movie industry by scoring such films as: Walk, Don't Run, In Cold Blood, The Slender Tread, In the Heat of the Night, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, which featured Merrilee Rush performing a cover of the Burt Bacharach classic What The World Needs Now, Cactus Flower, The Getaway, The Italian Job and The Color Purple.
For television, Quincy Jones scored for such shows as Roots, Ironside, Sanford and Son, and The Bill Cosby Show, titled Chump Change, which later served as the theme for the game sow Now You See It.
Quincy Jones considers himself extremely blessed after he recovered in 1974 from a cerebral aneurysm. After two major brain surgeries and a half year convalescing, he continues an active life in the field of music and the arts.
In 1985, the amazing musician produced the American recording We Are The World to benefit the victims of Ethiopia's famine.
Michael Jackson's album Off The Wall, which Quincy Jones produced, sold 20 million copies and the following album Thriller sold 60 millions - the highest-selling album of all time.
[Author Affiliation]
by Earl Calloway
Defender Staff Writer
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