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Love, laugh, live and give is the secret to eternal youth
Quincy Jones is going to live to be 110, and he intends to live every day as if it will be his last, and one day it will be.
By: Mary Gostelow
Quincy Jones was in a 90-minute conversation with China's Oprah Winfrey, Yue-Sai Kan, at Three On The Bund, Shanghai, on Wednesday June 17th, 2009.
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Yes, he said, Swedish specialists told him the way. He is 76 right now, still plays trumpet many a night. He loves ladies, he says with a big laugh. Yes, love, laugh, live and give, that is the secret. He will try anything once - the bottom line is that if you are too cautious you never get anywhere. Yes, you make a lot of mistakes but at some point they turn into experiences. Now, at his age, nothing scares him any longer and he loves going from infancy to Alzheimer's without growing up.
Quincy Jones has the same charismatic impact as one would expect from a one-to-one with the Dalai Lama or Mandela - and yet there are 299 other people around you here at the THREE conversation evening. He seems to speak to you, and you alone.
This young man is ageless. He has somehow found time to come up with a record 79 Grammy award nominations, of which he went on to win 27. How did he get into all this? Well, he was a really bad boy at school, and at home, but one day he saw a piano, sat down and it changed his life. He has worked with everyone you can think of, from Count Basie through to Duke Ellington, Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie, Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra (he arranged Fly Me to the Moon, played on the first lunar landing by Buzz Aldrin). His production of Michael Jackson's Thriller has sold a record 104 million copies worldwide. It was Quincy Jones who discovered Oprah Winfrey, on Chicago-AM. He has produced and conducted such immortals as We are the World, Soul Bossa Nova (the theme for the 1998 World Cup), the music for Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Cold Blood and the Steven Spielberg classic, The Color Purple. He did the 2008 Special Olympics in Beijing.
Now Quincy Jones is the philanthropist. In 1999 the part-Welshman joined two Irish entertainers, Bono and Bob Geldorf, during a meeting with Pope John Paul II to try to end Third World debt, an initiative that raised a total of $27 billion. His Project Q Foundation, sponsored by Harvard School of Public Health, the Inter-American Development Bank and Time Warner, is supported by Angelina Jolie, Colin Powell and Queen Noor of Jordan. It improves kids' health and builds houses and schools in Cambodia, Rwanda and South Africa. He is leading a consortium to put culture into schools in the USA. Look, the French gave the world jazz and the USA gave the world modern pop but you would not know it, back home. Yes, he supported Hilary Clinton but now he is so proud to have an African-American in the White House (he never thought it would happen) and he has told the President the country should have a Minister of Culture.
Quincy Jones is really scared about the future of the music business. How is anyone going to make any money? Of the 300 in the audience when he spoke in Shanghai, 299 owned laptops. They can download what they want, as they can on their phones. How on earth is the industry going to survive. Everywhere there are hundreds if not thousands of budding new musicians and they cannot get a job - he cites the brilliant 20-year old Cuban pianist, Alfredo Rodriguez. There
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is going to have to be a brand-new revenue source but for the life of him he does not yet know what it is. He thinks cellphones are the answer and he is, he admits, working on this. Music is soulfood, everyone needs it in their lives (it is the only thing that uses both left and right sides of the brain). Music and water will be the last things left on the planet.
Quincy Jones' talk was hosted by Three On The Bund and sponsored by Alaska Glacier Cap water, Pepsico International and Sinophone Interpretation. He was back in Shanghai for the annual Shanghai International Film Festival, June 13-21, 2009, to which he was invited by the Festival's Chairman of Celebrity Invitation, the indefatigible Yue-Sai Kan (she had also successfully invited Halle Berry, Danny Boyle and Priyanka Chopra to join such local megastars as Zhang Ziyi). On top of all her other commitments, Yue-Sai Kan continues to chair the House of Yue-Sai design stores and to orchestrate and produce her own television shows.
Three On the Bund is the entertainment center in the 1916 building at, guess where, 3 The Bund. The conversion was done by its owners, House of Three Limited, working with architect Michael Graves. There is a magificent art gallery, which is a special project of House of Three Limited Chairman, Cherie Liem, who introduced both Quincy Jones and Yue-Sai Kan at the talk (her previous THREE speaker had been Pulitzer double-prizewinner Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and author, whose latest book is The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century). As Cherie Liem says, Three on the Bund seeks to create a place where the world shrinks and senses explode and she feels her Shanghai Gallery of Art is at the very epicenter of this cultural compression and sensory explosion. Three On The Bund also houses superb retail, an Evian Spa, and several really good restaurants, including the rooftop New Heights with its unique 1916-tower two-floor private dining rooms (one seats six, one seats two, only), plus the Whampoa Club.
After the Quincy Jones talk, Cherie Liem hosted dinner in one of those Three On the Bund popular restaurants, David Laris. Dinner for 16, in a private room, was cooked personally by the culinary maestro. His menu was Chilled cauliflower and leek with beluga; Trio of oysters on ice; Japanese toro with red seaweed jellied salad, sesames and sake, soya dressing; Crab, pickled and fried with fresh young coconut and a light Thai-inspired dressing; Beef carpaccio with truffle vinaigrette, basil and capers; Wild king fish with braised morels and pancetta with tomato; Squab, roasted and stuffed with foie gras and prunes, served with apple cider emulsion and port wine reduction; A taste of cheese with candied figs; Dessert tasting and, finally, Laris signature chocolate.
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