By Susan Peterson

Gazette Staff

Producer, composer, and musician extraordinaire Quincy Jones will deliver this year's Class Day speech during the traditional celebratory day before graduation.

He will address the senior class on Wednesday, June 4, in Tercentenary Theatre as part of the 1997 Commencement festivities. Class Day is an afternoon celebrating the senior class and attended by students and their families.

"I think he's a tremendous choice," said John Turner, senior class marshal and co-chair of the selection committee. "He is an influential figure in the worlds of music and entertainment, and he has had a close association with Harvard."

Turner also believes Jones will provide an excellent balance with the next day's Commencement speaker, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Jones' varied career spans 50 years and has included arranging and recording for such musicians as Ray Charles, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington, and producing Michael Jackson's Thriller -- the best-selling album of all time.

The first film Jones produced was The Color Purple (1985), which garnered 11 Oscar nominations. Jones won an Emmy for his score for the opening episode of the TV miniseries, Roots; and he has captured 26 Grammy Awards and 77 Grammy nominations -- more than any other artist.

Jones last visited Harvard in February to view the Hasty Pudding Theatricals' "Man of the Year" award production. The score for that event was co-written by Jones' daughter, Rashida, a Harvard senior. A three-year visiting assistant professorship in Afro-American studies and music has also been endowed in Jones' name by Time Warner and Harvard.