By Jaclyn Breeze —
Quincy Jones was a trumpeter, composer, conductor, producer, and bandleader. Born in Chicago in 1933, he began learning stride piano from his next-door neighbor when he was five or six years old. When he was in his teens, his family moved to Seattle, where he learned to play trumpet and started arranging music. He attended Berklee College of Music in Boston after high school. He soon started traveling with Lionel Hampton for a tour with the Hampton Orchestra. After the tour, he settled in New York and started writing and worked writing music and playing in studio bands. He played with many of the top musicians such as Elvis and Dizzy Gillespie. In 1957 he moved to Paris, where he studied composition with Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen. He toured Europe with several jazz orchestras and soon started working for a record company. He started producing music and films, receiving numerous awards for both. He stopped playing the trumpet in the 70s after he had brain surgery for an aneurysm, and his doctors warned that he shouldn’t play anymore. Quincy died in November 2024 in Los Angeles.
During his life, he wrote music for nearly 40 major motion pictures, arranged music for artists including Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, and produced music for artists such as Michael Jackson. He was the recipient of numerous awards including Academy Awards, Tonys, Emmys, Grammys, Honorary Doctorates, and he is one of only 15 people to have been awarded a Grammy Legend Award.
Check out some of his work here:
Composer:
The Wiz (rated G) – full movie available on Netflix, Youtube, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, and more
Producer:
We Are the World – USA for Africa
Thriller – Michael Jackson
Coloring sheet:
