Jones to speak at Texas music conference

Famed music producer Quincy Jones has agreed to deliver the keynote address at the 2009 South By Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas, organizers said.

The composer and arranger is to give his speech at the conference March 19, it was announced Thursday.

A longtime humanitarian who produced and conducted the historic ‘We Are the World’ recording benefiting Ethiopian famine relief, Jones is expected to discuss the power of music to influence and create positive change in the world and the responsibility of the artist to use their craft to bring people together for the betterment of mankind, conference organizers said in a news release.

Among Jones’s current and upcoming projects are the recently released book The Complete Quincy Jones: My Journey and Passions; a feature film documentary on Brazil’s Carnival Festival, which will benefit the victims of Hurricane Katrina and Brazil’s impoverished Favelas; a bio-pic mini-series on jazz great Louis Armstrong; a duets album with Tony Bennett and Stevie Wonder, and a tribute album of his recordings featuring artists like Usher, John Legend and Amy Winehouse. He is also planning a chain of nightclub-restaurants inspired by his album Q’s Jook Joint, with the first slated to open in Las Vegas in 2009.