Name: OPTIONAL SPECIAL EVENT: QUINCY JONES SYMPHONIC
Start: 2025-03-14T19:30:00-0700
End: 2025-03-14T21:30:00-0700

POP CONFERENCE 2025

Baby, It’s a Look!
Popular Music, Style, and Fashion at the Edge

March 13 - 15, 2025

Los Angeles, California

Presented by USC Thornton School of Music

With the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM-US) and Critical Minded

Over three exciting days of panels, roundtables, keynotes, and special events, the 23rd annual Pop Conference will explore the deep and complex relationship between popular music, style, and fashion. This year’s theme, “Baby, It’s a Look: Popular Music, Style, and Fashion at the Edge,” draws its inspiration from a 2017 Leikeli47 lyric and marks the first joint gathering of PopCon and IASPM-US since 2012.

Fashion and music are inextricably linked, from Josephine Baker’s banana skirt, Cab Calloway’s zoot suits, Billie Holiday’s signature gardenia, to The Beatles’ mop-top haircuts. Today, the connection between pop music and fashion remains stronger than ever. Visualizers thrive on streaming platforms; fashion runways in Paris, Rio de Janeiro, and Johannesburg deploy pop music to bring designers’ visions to life; and musicians themselves blaze new trails designing streetwear collections and serving as creative directors for major fashion houses.

But style has always been much more than just commerce or escapism—it has long been a space for critique, refusal, defiance, and radical expression. At its most powerful, style challenges norms, blurs boundaries, and pushes artistic and cultural frontiers, moving us right to the edge.

This year’s conference returns to USC’s Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles just months after January 2025’s catastrophic Eaton and Palisades wildfires, and during a time of profound global upheaval and turmoil. The 2025 “Baby, It’s a Look: Popular Music, Style, and Fashion at the Edge” conference presents a remix, an opportunity to reconsider how fashion and music shape the world we live in, reflecting our realities, struggles, and aspirations while leading us toward the very edge of what feels possible.

Open to the public and free admission with conference registration on Eventbrite. Some events may require separate registration.

Friday March 14, 2025 7:30pm - 9:30pm PDT

Bovard Auditorium

Part of the yearlong event series Quincy Jones: Beyond Category
LOCATION: Bovard Administration Building, 3551 Trousdale Pkwy, Los Angeles, CA 90089
Doors open at 7:00 pm

Use this PopCon-specific link to access your free PopCon ticket, or use code “popcon” at checkout. PopCon seating at this event is limited and will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Quincy Jones Symphonic is the first full-length concert dedicated to honoring the legendary Quincy Jones since his passing in November 2024. Held on what would have been his 92nd birthday, this unforgettable evening will feature the USC Thornton Symphony in a celebration of Jones’s extraordinary compositional legacy and his profound impact on film, television, music, and culture across the 20th and 21st centuries. The program will include selections from his legendary scores for television programs like Roots and award-winning films like The Color Purple, orchestral renditions of his iconic pop and jazz hits for artists like Lesley Gore and Michael Jackson, and lesser-known gems from his remarkable seven-decade catalog. Anthony Parnther, Music Director of California’s San Bernardino Symphony Orchestra and conductor of film scores including Oppenheimer and Encanto, will be guest conductor for the evening. Produced and hosted by USC Thornton School of Music Dean Jason King, the event will feature musical oversight by USC Thornton’s Chair of Conducting Larry J. Livingston and original arrangements by Jazz Studies doctoral candidate Ennis Harris.

Special guest performers will include:

Ledisi, Grammy-winning recording artist
Stevie Mackey, renowned artist, singer and celebrity vocal coach
Greg Phillinganes, legendary keyboardist and famed Quincy Jones collaborator
Derrick Lawrence, prize-winning baritone and USC Thornton faculty
Seth Parker Woods, multiple Grammy–nominated cellist and USC Thornton faculty

Artists

Pop Conference 2025

Anthony Parnther

Derrick Lawrence

Ennis Harris

Ledisi

Seth Parker Woods

Stevie Mackey

USC Thornton Symphony

Attendees (27)

Attendees (27)

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