U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice praised Dean Geoffrey Cowan and USC Annenberg's Center on Public Diplomacy for efforts to "increase international understanding" in videotaped remarks to open a major celebration on Thu., Oct. 12. USC and the Center on Public Diplomacy organized a concert and discussion Jazz, Public Diplomacy & Dizzy Gillespie to mark the 50th anniversary of Gillespie's international concert tour on behalf of the State Department. Featured guests at the event included Quincy Jones, who served as music director for the tour and Lalo Schifrin, the Grammy Award-winning pianist and composer who was discovered by Gillespie during a tour stop in Buenos Aires. "In the past half century we have witnessed over and over again the power of art in America’s diplomacy," said Sec. Rice underscoring the theme of the program. "It is the power that speaks to all people, that expresses the full range of our ideas and our emotions, and reminds us that despite our differences of language or nationality, race or religion, politics or policy, our human experience is a shared one."
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