Quincy Jones and Ben Fong-Torres at City Arts & Lectures

Quincy Jones and Ben Fong-Torres at City Arts & Lectures City Arts & Lectures - City Arts & Lectures As a composer, producer, arranger, impresario, musician, performer and philanthropist, Quincy Jones has risen to the top of American music in the past seven decades.Born in Chicago, the Jones family moved to Seattle, Washington when Quincy was 10. The city, and the diversity of young musicians Jones would meet as a teenager there - Ray Charles, Buddy Catlett, Ernestine Anderson, had a lasting impact on his musical career.Quincy Jones began playing the trumpet in elementary school, and at 18 won a trumpet scholarship to the Schillinger House of Music (now Berklee College of Music) in Boston. In 1951, Jones left Boston to join bandleader Lionel Hampton on tour, and by 1956 had become the musical director and trumpeter for the Dizzy Gillespie Band.Since then Jones has built a dynamic, varied music career whose highlights include arranging for Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee and Dinah Washington, composing 33 major motion picture scores, producing Michael Jackson's groundbreaking Thriller album, and producing the popular NBC show The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Jones' numerous collaborations include work with Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Steven Spielberg, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, and Miles Davis.The recipient of 27 Grammy Awards, Quincy Jones has been nominated a record 79 times. Since the 1960s, Quincy Jones has been both activist and humanitarian. He founded the Institute for Black American Music, the Black Arts Festival in Chicago, and the Quincy Jones Listen Up Foundation, an international charity that serves young people through education and the arts.The latest book about Jones, The Complete Quincy Jones: My Journey and Passions, will be published in October 2008 - City Arts & Lectures

ForaTV | December 25, 2008

Tags:. .philanthropist. .bandleader. .ella. .dinah. .berklee