The Guild of Music Supervisors has announced its 11th Annual Icon Award honoree–record producer, composer, and songwriter, Quincy Jones. The Icon Award was created to celebrate those who have made legendary contributions to the music and film industry. Previous recipients of the Icon Award include Burt Bacharach, Kenny Loggins, and Marc Shaiman.
Guild of Music Supervisors president Joel C. High said of Jones, “He exemplifies the nature of this award as an artist who has truly set the path in using music to help tell stories. Quincy has influenced and inspired many in our industry and we look forward to celebrating his legacy with this award.”
Jones will be honored alongside the recipient of the Guild’s annual Legacy Award, a honor bestowed upon a music supervisor who has made an impact within the industry over the course of his or her career. The 11th Annual Guild of Music Supervisors Awards will be hosted as a virtual event on April 11, 2021. The organizers plan to bring together the music community with a show not only honoring Jones and outstanding music supervisors, but by throwing a virtual party with live and pre-recorded performances.
“This year, we have to do things a bit differently,” said Guild VP Madonna Wade-Reed. “We see this as an opportunity to celebrate the great Quincy Jones and the Best of Music Supervision not only locally in Los Angeles, but nationwide and at the end globally, really. We want to bring our community together for this one night to celebrate and have fun.”
Jones’ career has encompassed the roles of composer, record producer, artist, film producer, arranger, conductor, instrumentalist, TV producer, record company executive, magazine founder, multi-media entrepreneur and humanitarian. As a master inventor of musical hybrids, he has shuffled pop, soul, hip-hop, jazz, classical, African and Brazilian music into many dazzling fusions, traversing virtually every medium, including records, live performance, movies and television. Named by Time Magazine as one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 20th century, Jones was born on March 14, 1933, in Chicago and brought up in Seattle. 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. When he came aboard Mercury Records as VP in 1961, Jones became the first high-level Black executive of an established major record company.
The laurels, awards and accolades have been innumerable. Jones has won an Emmy Award for his score of the of the opening episode of the landmark TV miniseries, Roots, seven Oscar nominations, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, 28 Grammy Awards, and N.A.R.A.S.’ prestigious Trustees’ Award and The Grammy Living Legend Award. He is the all-time most nominated Grammy artist with a total of 80 Grammy nominations. In 2016, Jones received a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical for the Broadway production of The Color Purple. The award completed the rare EGOT set for Jones, an exclusive club of artists who have received an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award.
Submissions are now open for the Guild of Music Supervisors Awards and will close on December 31, 2020.
