Executive & Artistic Director

Thor Steingraber

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Fly Me to the Moon

A Tribute to Quincy Jones

Featuring

Pacific Jazz Orchestra®

Chris Walden, Conductor

With Special Guests

José James & Ms. Lisa Fischer

Sat | Oct 18 8pm

Run time: approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes, including a 20-minute intermission

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Program | Program Note

Vocalists & Musicians

Quincy Jones

Pacific Jazz Orchestra | Chris Walden

José James | Ms. Lisa Fischer

An Interview With Chris Walden & José James

Pacific Jazz Orchestra Production Staff

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The Soraya

Our Supporters | The Soraya Team

Quincy Jones (1933–2024)

Quincy Jones distinguished himself in nearly every aspect of music, including as a bandleader, record producer, musical composer and arranger, trumpeter, and record label executive. He worked with everyone from Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and Count Basie to Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, and Michael Jackson.

Born in Chicago in 1933, Jones was brought up in Seattle. He began learning the trumpet as a teenager. Jones moved to New York City in the early 1950s, finding work as an arranger and musician with Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey, and Lionel Hampton. In 1956, Gillespie chose Jones to play in his big band, later having him put together a band and act as musical director on Gillespie’s U.S. State Department tours of South America and the Middle East. The experience honed Jones’ skills at leading a jazz orchestra. He moved to Paris in 1957, and studied music theory with the renowned Nadia Boulanger. Jones put together a jazz orchestra that toured throughout Europe and North America.

Jones became music director for Mercury Records in 1960, rising to vice president four years later. Also in 1964, he composed his first film score for Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker. After the success of that film, Jones left Mercury Records for Los Angeles to pursue what became a highly successful career as a film score composer. He wrote scores for more than 35 films, including In Cold Blood, In the Heat of the Night, and The Italian Job.

In addition to his film scoring, Jones also continued to produce and arrange sessions in the 1960s, notably for Sinatra on his albums with Count Basie, It Might As Well Be Swing in 1964 and Sinatra at the Sands in 1966. Jones later produced Sinatra’s L.A. Is My Lady album in 1984.

Returning to the studio with his own work, Jones recorded a series of GRAMMY Award-winning albums between 1969 and 1981, including Walking in Space and You've Got It Bad, Girl. Following recovery from a near-fatal cerebral aneurysm in 1974, he focused on producing albums, most successfully with Jackson’s Off the Wall and Thriller, and the “We Are the World” sessions to raise money for the victims of Ethiopia’s famine in 1985. In 1991, Jones coaxed Davis into revisiting his 1950s orchestral collaborations with Gil Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival, conducting the orchestra for one of Davis’ last concerts.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Jones also ventured into filmmaking, co-producing, with Steven Spielberg, The Color Purple, and managing his own record label Qwest Records, along with continuing to make and produce music.

In 2010, then-President Barack Obama awarded Jones the National Medal of Arts, the highest honor given to artists and arts patrons by the United States government. Jones was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2013.

Jones garnered 80 GRAMMY Award nominations, of which he won 28.

He passed away in Los Angeles from pancreatic cancer on Nov. 3, 2024, at the age of 91.

Pacific Jazz Orchestra

The Pacific Jazz Orchestra is Los Angeles’ premier 40-piece ensemble for jazz and beyond, redefining the orchestral jazz experience. With an annual concert season featuring five distinct projects and an impressive lineup of guest artists, the orchestra transcends genres to present a vibrant array of musical styles. Performances take place across select L.A.-area venues, showcasing the city’s rich cultural and musical diversity.

As the only orchestra of its kind in the United States, the PJO epitomizes the spirit of jazz — one of America’s original art forms — brought to life by the unmatched talent of L.A.’s finest musicians. A 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the orchestra boasts an advisory board that includes legends such as David Foster, Monica Mancini, Rickey Minor, Harvey Mason Jr., and Ledisi.

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Chris Walden

Chris Walden (Artistic Director and Conductor) is a seven-time GRAMMY-nominated composer and arranger, who has worked with Herb Alpert, Michael Bublé, Aretha Franklin, Josh Groban, Diana Krall, John Legend, Paul McCartney, Rihanna, Seal, Barbra Streisand, and many more. Walden serves as lead arranger at the Oscars and has conducted the LA Phil, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, Metropole Orkest, Boston Pops, Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, WDR Big Band Cologne, and many more.

José James

José James is a jazz artist for the hip-hop generation who artfully blurs the lines between traditional and contemporary jazz, hip-hop, soul, funk, pop, and rock. He has released more than a dozen critically acclaimed albums for labels such as Brownswood Recordings, Impulse, Blue Note, and his own co-founded Rainbow Blonde Records. James is the recipient of the Edison Award and L'Académie du Jazz Grand Prix. He has collaborated with many notable artists including Flying Lotus, Robert Glasper, Lalah Hathaway, Ledisi, Aloe Blacc, and Jason Moran.

A celebrated international performer, James has presented his work at venues such as The Kennedy Center, Hollywood Bowl, Ancienne Belgique, and Billboard Live Tokyo, and he’s performed as a guest artist with McCoy Tyner, Laura Mvula, Melbourne Symphony, and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

Ms. Lisa Fischer

When the iconic Lisa Fischer sings, she brings a joyous sense of discovery. The GRAMMY and Oscar-winning powerhouse vocalist is at the peak of her powers, blazing her own path, reveling in the chance to dive into every vocal possibility.

While she carries traces of the legendary stars with whom she’s collaborated over four decades, Fischer is a constellation in her own right, singing songs with “amazing power, energy, and projection,” says Keith Richards, after 26 years of musicmaking with Fischer in the Rolling Stones. Whether she’s stretching out in an intimate duo with jazz piano maestro Taylor Eigsti, raising the roof with the spiritually charged Gullah funk combo Ranky Tanky, creating luminous soundscapes onstage with the dancers of Alonzo King LINES Ballet, or following her uninhibited muse with her trio Grand Baton and their organic fusion of Caribbean psychedelic soul and jazzy progressive rock, Fischer has taken her rightful place among America’s greatest vocalists. Roberta Flack described her as “a talent that comes once in a lifetime. Like Halley’s Comet, her brilliance is dazzling and brings light into the world.”

At first glance, Fischer might seem like a paradox. She spent much of her career exulting in the role of the ultimate team player as an elite backup singer for artists such as Luther Vandross, the Rolling Stones, Sting, Tina Turner, and Nine Inch Nails. Even after the Brooklyn native scored a chart-topping R&B hit, “How Can I Ease the Pain,” and a 1992 GRAMMY Award for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, she decided to focus on her already thriving career supporting the world’s biggest acts. But when her story was featured in the Oscar-winning 2013 documentary 20 Feet From Stardom, Fischer experienced a course-changing epiphany. “I was always looking at the next tour, the next gig,” she says. “The film gave me a chance to take stock and realize I could start defining my own path.” Seizing the moment to rediscover herself, Fischer embarked on her ongoing musical journey with string wizard and arranger JC Maillard’s Grand Baton, a group capable of following (and leading) her in just about any musical direction. Together they’ve gathered a far-ranging repertoire of songs. “Grand Baton gave me my wings,” she says. “They give me permission to do whatever I want.”

While Fischer retains creative molecules from every artist she’s ever encountered, she transmutes via the alchemy of an artist blessed with a voice that is unbound by genre and stylistic convention. With her infinite textures, shades and hues, combined with the bountiful soul, affectionate humor and exquisite taste that defines her music, Fischer leads listeners to whole new universes of her own design.