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Bremerton honors Quincy Jones’ with new square and jazz festival

A colorful mural on the side of a parking garage with one large portrait of a Black man smiling and other smaller portraits below.
Bremerton Downtown Association
A colorful new mural by KaDavien Baylor honors Quincy Jones and highlights some of his famous collaborators, as well as influential African Americans from Bremerton.

Record producer and musician Quincy Jones, who died last year at 91, spent his youth living in Bremerton, Washington, where he first discovered his love for music after playing an old upright piano at a nearby community center.

In recent years, the Navy town across the water from Seattle, has worked to honor Jones and his childhood connection to the city. Now, two initiatives — one renaming and rebuilding part of Bremerton’s downtown, and the other reviving a student jazz festival on Kitsap Peninsula — are coming to fruition.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, seven years after the project was suggested at a Bremerton 4th Street action group meeting, organizers broke ground on the new Quincy Square. Jones' brother and the mayor were among the local leaders present for the celebration.

Once completed, the square, located on 4th Street in downtown Bremerton, will include a permanent band stand and expanded sidewalk space for events. The construction project is expected to take up to seven months and will be part of a Creative District.

A group of people, with some at the front, holding golden shovels.
Francesco Crosara
/
Music Discovery Center
Judge Richard Jones (Quincy Jones' brother) and Bremerton Mayor Greg Wheeler were among the local leaders at the groundbreaking ceremony for Quincy Square on Jan. 20, 2025.

Bremerton will also host its first annual Quincy Square Jazz Festival for young musicians in Kitsap County on Feb. 7.

Organized by the Music Discovery Center and Olympic College, the festival will feature 13 high school and middle school jazz ensembles. The ensembles will compete against one another, creating an opportunity to sharpen their skills as musicians.

The preliminary competition will take place at Olympic College during the day before the finalists perform at the historic Roxy Theatre, the focal point of Quincy Square.

The Music Discovery Center is a nonprofit organization that will be located in Quincy Square and offers several programs for children and adults. MDC’s mission is to help music students by helping them become engaged in music study so that they might be inspired by music the way that Jones was as a child.

“I am very excited to be part of the Music Discovery Center (MDC), which is on the verge of exploding into the scene with a special focus on the Kitsap community,” said Francesco Crosara, a jazz pianist and board president of the Music Discovery Center, in an email.

A crowd stands in front of a theater with a marquee on a street partially under construction
Bremerton Downtown Association
The Quincy Square groundbreaking ceremony on Jan. 20, 2025. Bremerton's 4th Street is being redeveloped to anchor the city's Creative District.

Other members of the Music Discovery Center board, including co-founder Steve Rice, are part of the coalition working to redevelop the square.

“The legacy of the great Quincy Jones is very present in our mission, and it is an honor to be linked to the construction of the new Quincy Square in downtown Bremerton, which will become the headquarters for the MDC,” Crosara told KNKX.

Crosara said MDC will also start a music summer camp for 5th graders in August, and that they will continue to produce the Make Music Day celebration in Bremerton on June 21.

A picture for the Olympic College Northwest Jazz Festival.
Cara Kuhlman
/
KNKX
A poster of the Olympic College Northwest Jazz Festival that ran from 1960 to 1974.

The Quincy Square Jazz Festival has another honoree in Ralph Mutchler, the longtime band director at Olympic College, a community college in Bremerton known for its music program during his tenure.

Mutchler ran the highly successful Olympic College Jazz Festival from 1960 to 1974. Mutchler died in 1989, but his musical legacy continues. Organizers say this new festival is a way to honor Mutchler as a force in music education by providing new opportunities for Kitsap high school and middle school bands.

The two finalists from the competition will face off at a gala that will be held at the Roxy Theatre at the close of the evening where the winner will receive the Ralph Mutchler Sweepstakes award.

The first annual Quincy Square Jazz Festival is open to the public and tickets are available through the Music Discovery Center.

Editor's note: KNKX is an in-kind sponsor of the Quincy Square Jazz Festival. This article was produced independent of any sponsorship and in accordance with the Public Media Code of Integrity.

Updated: February 7, 2025 at 4:20 PM PST
The City of Bremerton is pausing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives due to concerns over the potential loss of federal funding. The pause may impact the construction of Quincy Square.

According to the Kitsap Sun, Bremerton Mayor Greg Wheeler is worried if the city doesn't comply with the recent executive orders from the White House, some or all of the more than $19 million in federal funding the city relies on could be revoked.

A portion of the federal dollars the city received was used to fund DEI initiatives to address systemic inequities in the workplace. The Quincy Square project, which includes new housing and creating and arts and culture hub, is one of the current projects that depend on federal money.
Tera Watson is a digital producer at KNKX.