Quincey Jones

"This album is my very special Valentine to you. Inside you'll find a collection of my 25 favorite love songs--sung by my favorite singers--from all that I have ever produced, written, conducted or arranged. These songs hold a special place in my heart, each one evoking a unique place and time in my life."

So says Quincy Jones on the impetus and inspiration of From Q, With Love, his new deluxe double CD collection of classic Quincy songs on Qwest Records.

Featuring 25 love songs that span the entire career of this quintessential musical master, From Q, With Love also spotlights four new original tracks, performed by Tevin Campbell, Patti Austin, (a duet by) Siedah Garrett and El DeBarge, and new Qwest recording artist Catero.

A collection culled by the artist himself from material recorded over the past 32 years of his more than half-century in the music business, From Q, With Love also features performances by Gerald Albright, George Benson, Brandy, Naomi Campbell, George Duke, Rachelle Ferrell, David Foster, Aretha Franklin, Aaron Hall, Herbie Hancock, Heavy D, Benard Ighner, James Ingram, Ron Isley, Michael Jackson, R. Kelly, Letta Mbulu, Brian McKnight, James Moody, Greg Phillinganes, Frank Sinatra with the Count Basie Orchestra, Al B. Sure, Take 6, Tamia, Toots Thielemans, Toto, Luther Vandross, Sarah Vaughan, Mervyn Warren, Kirk Whalum, Barry White, Charlie Wilson and Phil Woods.

"This project has been a long time coming," remarks Quincy in the liner notes of From Q, With Love. "I've been carrying tapes of these love songs around for many years. I have always kept them near and dear to my heart, and have given them to friends and family over the years as gifts. It wasn't until after Oprah's [Winfrey] fortieth birthday party that I decided to 'let the cat out of the bag.' We had 40 wonderful friends over to my house to celebrate the night for my special unconditional love-sister-friend, and I made a special set of these tapes as gifts for everyone to take home with them. The feedback over the next couple of weeks was incredible! People kept calling and calling requesting more copies -- so I decided that I had to make them available to everyone!

"This album represents some of my favorite love songs from my private and personal collection," Quincy continues. "They're performed by some of my favorite artists -- some of whom are still with us, some who are, regrettably, not, and some who we will be hearing a lot about in the future. It is an album for everyone who is in love, has lost love, or who's waiting for love. Especially after the sun goes down."

As a master of musical hybrids, Quincy Jones has shuffled pop, soul, hip-hop, jazz, classical, African and Brazilian music into many dazzling and distinctive fusions, encompassing virtually every medium, including records, live performances, movies and television. He is a 26-time Grammy Award winner (second on the all-time list) and is the all-time most-nominated Grammy artist with a total of 77 nods. His most recent recording alone, Q's Jook Joint, garnered seven Grammy nominations in various categories.

As producer and conductor of the historic "We Are The World" recording (the best-selling single of all time) and Michael Jackson's multi-platinum solo albums, Off The Wall, Bad and Thriller (the best-selling album of all time, at more than 45 million copies and counting), Quincy Jones stands as one of the most successful and admired creative artist/executives in the entertainment world.

An impresario in the broadest and most creative sense of the word, Quincy's musical ventures reach from the post-swing era through today's high-tech studio wizardry. In 1953, he was the first conductor-arranger to record with a Fender bass. In 1964, his theme from the hit TV series Ironside was the first synthesizer-based pop theme song. Quincy also wrote the theme for Sanford & Son, and his theme for the opening episode of the historic mini-series Roots received an Emmy. As the first black composer to be embraced by the Hollywood establishment in the '60s, he helped refresh movie music with badly needed infusions of jazz and soul. His landmark 1989 album, Back On The Block (named Album Of The Year at the 1990 Grammy Awards) brought such legends as Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Miles Davis together with Ice T, Big Daddy Kane and Melle Mel to create the first blend of bebop and hip-hop musical traditions. His 1993 release of the critically-acclaimed Miles Davis & Quincy Jones: Live At Montreux featured Quincy conducting Miles Davis' live performance of the historic Gil Evans arrangements from the Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain sessions and won a Grammy Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Performance.

Quincy Jones was born in Chicago on March 14, 1933, and grew up in Seattle. While in junior high school, he began studying trumpet and sang in a gospel quartet. His musical studies continued at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he remained until the opportunity arose to tour with Lionel Hampton's band as a trumpeter, arranger and sometime-pianist. In 1951, he moved on to New York and the musical big leagues, where his reputation as an arranger grew. By the mid-'50s, he was arranging and recording for such diverse artists as Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Big Maybelle, Dinah Washington, Cannonball Adderly and LeVern Baker.

In 1957, Quincy decided to continue his musical education by studying with Nadia Boulanger, the legendary Parisian tutor to American expatriate composers such as Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copeland. To subsidize his studies he took a job with Barclay Disques, Mercury's French distributor. Among the artists he recorded in Europe were Charles Aznavour, Jacques Brel and Henri Salvador, as well as such visitors from America as Sarah Vaughan, Billy Eckstine and Andy Williams. Quincy's love affair with European audiences continues through the present: in 1991, he began a continuing association with the Montreux Jazz and World Music Festival, for which he serves as co-producer with founder Claude Nobs.

Quincy won the first of his many Grammys in 1963 for his Count Basie arrangement of "I Can't Stop Loving You." Quincy's three-year musical association as conductor and arranger with Frank Sinatra in the mid-'60s also teamed him with Basie for the classic Sinatra At The Sands, containing the famous arrangement of "Fly Me To The Moon," the first recording played by astronaut Buzz Aldrin when he landed on the moon's surface in 1969.

When he became vice-president at Mercury Records in 1961, Quincy became the first high-level black executive of an established major record company. Toward the end of his association with the label, Quincy turned his attention to another musical area that had been closed to blacks--the world of film scores. In 1963, he started work on the music for Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker, the first of his 33 major motion picture scores. In 1985, he co-produced Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Alice Walker's The Color Purple, which won 11 Oscar nominations, introduced Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey to film audiences, and marked Quincy's debut as a film producer. In 1991, Quincy and his company QJE helped launch the acting career of rapper and film star Will Smith on NBC-TV's hit series The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air, (now in syndication) for which Jones acted as an executive producer.

In January 1992, Quincy Jones executive-produced the An American Reunion concert at Lincoln Memorial, an all-star concert and celebration that was the first official event of the presidential inaugural celebration, and drew widespread acclaim as an HBO telecast.

QJE, in conjunction with David Salzman, produced the currently running UPN's In The House and Fox Television's Mad TV. Quincy Jones is the founder and chairman of VIBE Magazine and part-owner of SPIN Magazine.

On March 25, 1996, Quincy Jones, was executive producer of the most-watched awards show in the world, the 68th Annual Academy Awards. The show was recognized as one of the most memorable Academy Award shows in recent years.

As a record company executive, Quincy remains highly active in the recording field as the guiding force behind his own Qwest Records, which boasts such important artists as New Order, Tevin Campbell, Milt Jackson, Tamia, Andraé Crouch, Young Americans, Shannon and Catero. New Order's album Substance earned Qwest a gold record in 1987. Tevin Campbell's debut T.E.V.I.N. was both a critical sensation and major commercial success, with his follow-up release, I'm Ready, going double platinum. The label's release of the Boyz N The Hood soundtrack album was among the most successful recordings of 1991. Qwest Records has also released soundtrack albums from the major motion pictures Sarafina! and Malcolm X.

In 1994, Quincy Jones led a group of businessmen that included football Hall of Famer Willie Davis, television producer Don Cornelius, television journalist Geraldo Rivera and Sonia Salzman in the formation of Qwest Broadcasting. A minority-controlled broadcasting company, it has purchased television stations WATL in Atlanta and WNOL in New Orleans, establishing it as one of the largest minority-owned broadcasting companies in the United States. Quincy serves as chairman and CEO of Qwest Broadcasting.

In October of 1998, Quincy formed Quincy Jones Media Group, Inc., with the following projects currently in development as feature films: The Life Of Alexander Pushkin (with Milos Forman directing); Vacuums (in conjunction with creators of Stomp, Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas); The Story of J. Edgar Hoover (co-produced by Quincy and Francis Ford Coppola, directed by the Hughes Brothers); The Godfather Of Rock 'n' Roll, starring Robert De Niro (produced with Tribeca films and written by Stephen Schiff). For TV and cable, Quincy is producing a six-hour mini-series for HBO (with Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, based on The Children, a book by David Halberstam), and is co-executive producing, along with David Salzman and Earvin "Magic" Johnson (co-producer David Rosemont), Passing Glory for TNT, starring Andre Braugher and Rip Torn, directed by Steve James.

Quincy's life and career were chronicled in the critically-acclaimed Warner Bros. film, Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones, produced by Courtney Sale Ross. This film helped illuminate not only Quincy's music and spirit, but also revealed much about the development of the African American musical tradition. Reflecting on the changes in pop music over the years, Quincy says, "If there are any common denominators, they are spirit and musicality. I go for the music that gives me goose bumps, music that touches my heart and my soul." Over the years, Quincy Jones has reached the essence of music and art -- the ability to touch people's feelings and emotions.

That ability is brilliantly reflected in the selections of From Q, With Love. With new tracks that include the debut single "I'm Yours," a duet with Siedah Garrett and El Debarge; "Something I Cannot Have" featuring Catero; "Everything" with Tevin Campbell and "If This Time Is The Last Time" with Patti Austin, From Q, With Love also highlights classic tracks from such albums as The Dude, Back On The Block, Michael Jackson's Thriller and Bad and Frank Sinatra's Sinatra At The Sands. Adorned by the celebrated artistry of Aretha Franklin, Luther Vandross, Sarah Vaughan, R. Kelly, James Ingram, Brian McKnight, George Benson, Brandy, Barry White and Tamia, Quincy's Valentine to the world offers the most enduring gift of all…love…wrapped in romance and sealed with the matchless artistry of Jones, himself, and some of the preeminent musicians and vocalists of our time.