This hour-long, one-on-one interview program provides a unique and insightful look at the life and career of music mogul Quincy Jones. Taped live in Washington, D.C. at George Washington University’s Jack Morton Auditorium on Thursday, September 27, 2007, this program is the thirteenth in The HistoryMakers’ An Evening With. . . series. Television journalist, moderator and managing editor of Washington Week, Gwen Ifill interviewed the legendary Quincy Jones PBS-TV interview. This special program includes live musical performances by Lesley Gore, BeBe Winans, James Ingram, Bobby McFerrin and Herbie Hancock. 

In the interview, Quincy shares his life story including growing up in Chicago, establishing a musical career in Seattle, working with music greats such as Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Michael Jackson and his career as a film and television producer, composer, record company executive, magazine founder and multi-media entrepreneur. This informative interview will reveal some things you may not have known about Mr. Jones, and the musical performances will have you snapping your fingers and tapping your feet! 

An Evening With Quincy Jones is a celebration of Quincy’s life and career that spans over six decades. 

Quincy Jones

An impresario in the broadest and most creative sense of the word, Quincy Jones’ career include the roles of composer, record producer, artist, film producer, arranger, conductor, instrumentalist, TV producer, record company executive, television station owner, magazine founder, multi-media entrepreneur and humanitarian. His multitude of awards include an Emmy Award, seven Academy Award nominations, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, 27 Grammy Awards. Quincy Jones is the all-time most nominated Grammy artist with a total of 79 nominations. He was inducted as a Kennedy Center Honoree, America’s most prestigious artistic award, for his lifetime contributions to the culture of the country He is also the recipient of the Commandeur de la Legion d’ Honneur. 

Quincy Jones' autobiography Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones made The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal Best-Sellers lists. Released by Doubleday Publishing, the critically acclaimed biography retells Jones’ life story from his days as an impoverished youth on the Southside of Chicago through a massively impressive career in music, film and television where he worked beside legends such as Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald and Michael Jackson, among many others. In conjunction with the autobiography, Rhino Records released a 4-cd boxed set of Jones’ music, spanning his more than 5 decade career in the music business, entitled Q: The Musical Biography of Quincy Jones. 

Gwen Ifill
Pioneering journalist Gwen Ifill was born in Queens, New York in 1955. After earning her B.A. degree in Communications from Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1977, Ifill was hired by The Boston Herald American in the midst of the city’s notorious busing crisis. After joining the Baltimore Evening Sun, she moved to covering national politics. In 1984, Ifill was hired by The Washington Post; and in 1991, she became The White House correspondent for The New York Times. In 1994, she was named the chief Congressional correspondent for NBC; and in 1999, she became the moderator of PBS’ Washington Week in Review, as well as a correspondent for The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. In October of 2004, Ifill became the first African American woman to moderate a vice-presidential debate. Ifill’s first book, The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama, was published in 2009.
 
Ifill served as the moderator for the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington D.C. Ifill is the recipient of more than a dozen honorary doctorates and several broadcasting excellence awards, including honors from the National Press Foundation, Ebony Magazine, the Radio Television News Directors Association, and American Women in Radio and Television. Ifill also interviewed Diahann Carroll, Eartha Kitt, Smokey Robinson and Valerie Simpson for The HistoryMakers annual PBS-TV An Evening With…series. 

  Executive Producer

Director

 Music Director

Assistant Producers

Performers

Honorary Co-Chair 

Benefit Chair 

 Benefit Co-Chair 

 Benefit Committee