This man could do everything. I read his New York Times obituary this morning and it was like going back through layers of an onion, all of the accomplishments layered on top of previous accomplishments. I'd forgotten he spent a lot of time in Seattle. I hadn't forgotten about the Thriller album but I didn't remember that he did soundtracks for so many films (The Pawnbroker, In Cold Blood, The Color Purple, and more, along with many TV program theme songs).

Quincy Jones worked with everybody over the years, and each job added to his skills and ability to make connections for others. Jazz, pop, hiphop and I wouldn't be surprised if he turns out to have made it possible for a few in the folk and blues fields to move forward in their careers. His latest years really expanded to encompass a lot of musical scholarship in many areas.

In his final decades, Mr. Jones dedicated much of his time to charity work through his Listen Up! Foundation; established a Quincy Jones professorship of African American music at Harvard University; produced “Keep On Keepin’ On,” a 2014 film about the teacher-student relationship between the 89-year-old Clark Terry, Mr. Jones’s old mentor, and Justin Kauflin, a young blind jazz pianist; and released the album “Soul Bossa Nostra,” reprising songs he’d produced in the past, with appearances by Snoop Dogg, T-Pain and Amy Winehouse, who contributed a louche version of “It’s My Party” — her last commercial release before her death in 2011.

Mr. Jones stayed in the public eye. In 2018, he made headlines when he gave wide-ranging interviews to New York and GQ magazines that contained surprising comments about Michael Jackson and other subjects.

In 2017, he helped launch a video platform, Qwest TV, offering high-definition streams of jazz concerts and documentaries, and in 2022 he appeared on the album “Dawn FM” by the Weeknd, performing a monologue on the track “A Tale by Quincy.”

But even his not-fully-realized back-burner projects tell a story of their own, a kind of secondary biography of the obsessions and connections of a constantly busy man. Among them were a musical about Sammy Davis Jr.; a Cirque du Soleil show on the history of Black American music, from its African roots; a film about Brazilian carnivals; a film version of Ralph Ellison’s unfinished novel “Juneteenth”; and a film on the life of Alexander Pushkin, the Russian poet who was said to be of African origin.