Post by System on Nov 5, 2024 0:12:57 GMT
Quincy Jones, one of the most powerful forces in American popular music for more than half a century, died on Sunday night in his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He was 91.
His death was confirmed in a statement by his publicist, Arnold Robinson, who did not specify the cause.
Mr. Jones began his career as a jazz trumpeter and was later in great demand as an arranger, writing for the big bands of Count Basie and others; as a composer of film music; and as a record producer. But he may have made his most lasting mark by doing what some believe to be equally important in the ground-level history of an art form: the work of connecting.
Beyond his hands-on work with score paper, he organized, charmed, persuaded, hired and validated. Starting in the late 1950s, he took social and professional mobility to a new level in Black popular art, eventually creating the conditions for a great deal of music to flow between styles, outlets and markets. And all of that could be said of him even if he had not produced Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” the best-selling album of all time.
www.nytimes.com/2024/11/04/arts/music/quincy-jones-dead.html
His death was confirmed in a statement by his publicist, Arnold Robinson, who did not specify the cause.
Mr. Jones began his career as a jazz trumpeter and was later in great demand as an arranger, writing for the big bands of Count Basie and others; as a composer of film music; and as a record producer. But he may have made his most lasting mark by doing what some believe to be equally important in the ground-level history of an art form: the work of connecting.
Beyond his hands-on work with score paper, he organized, charmed, persuaded, hired and validated. Starting in the late 1950s, he took social and professional mobility to a new level in Black popular art, eventually creating the conditions for a great deal of music to flow between styles, outlets and markets. And all of that could be said of him even if he had not produced Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” the best-selling album of all time.
www.nytimes.com/2024/11/04/arts/music/quincy-jones-dead.html