‘We think we’re in charge of this stuff but we’re not,’ said Quincy Jones, the composer, arranger, jazz trumpeter, musical genius. He was talking to Julian Joseph at the Montreux Jazz Festival for Jazz Line-Up on Radio 3 (Saturday). ‘It’s divine intervention.’
Jones, who masterminded Michael Jackson’s Thriller as well as countless other hits, film scores (including The Italian Job and The Color Purple) and his own ‘Soul Bossa Nova’, was remarkably sanguine about his extraordinary career. His enormous self-confidence was there from the start. Finding himself in Paris in the 1950s touring with a big band, he decided to stay on so that he could study with Nadia Boulanger and learn how to write for a symphony orchestra. ‘You have to master your skill,’ he said.
On Monday night, the Prom at the Albert Hall will be devoted to his music, the walls ringing out to jazz classics, funk and pop from the Metropole Orkest, in recognition of Jones’s ability to criss-cross musical genres.
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