Quincy Jones Orchestra

Known to everyone simply as ‘Q’, Quincy Jones – born in Chicago, Illinois on March 15, 1933 - has had a huge influence on the course of modern music through his production, arrangement and composition work with a whole range of artists. His work has covered many genres including jazz, pop, soul and hip hop. He started out as a jazz trumpeter, forming his first group as a teenager with Ray Charles, but left to go on the road with the legendary Lionel Hampton. This led to arranging work for many seminal jazz figures, including Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, Tommy Dorsey, Cannonball Adderley and Gene Krupa. Jones then went on the road as musical arranger with Dizzy Gillespie's band. Wanting to expand his musical repertoire, he went to Paris, France in 1957 to study classical music with French composer Nadia Boulanger, who had previously taught Igor Stravinsky and Leonard Bernstein. He returned to the U.S. and formed the Quincy Jones Orchestra (often referred to as Quincy Jones and His Orchestra). The big band spent the late 1950s backing jazz greats such as Art Farmer and Dina Washington. The Quincy Jones Orchestra released several albums on their own throughout the 1960s including Around the World (1961), Big Band Bossa Nova (1962), Plays the Hip Hits (1963), Quincy Plays for Pussycats (1964), and Quincy’s Got a Brand New Bag (1965). Quincy Jones also used his orchestra on many of the soundtracks that he composed in the 1960s and 1970s. They also continued to back other artists during this period including Dinah Washington and backed Frank Sinatra on his 1984 album L.A. Is My Lady.

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