The final part of the concert brought Alice Babs back on stage.
She starts with a couple of selections from Elington’s Sacred Concerts in arrangements by Andrew Homzy. First Alice sings The Lord’s Prayer: My Love from Third Sacred Concert and then Freedom from Second Sacred Concert.
Then she moves on to There’s Something About Me – the song Duke gave her back in 1967 and which she recorded in 1974 for an album which got the same name. Babs also sung the song at the Ellington concert in Malmö in 1973.
After this number the mood in the concert changes.
Introducing what was to come Alice said: “Sometimes the Maestro wrote only a few chords and said to me now you do what you want with them. And now Andrew has done something similar for me but with a little bit more of melody.” And then she and the orchestra jumped into The Duality of the Blues.
The concert ends with another swinging number which Babs learnt from a 78 when she was a teenager – I’m Checkin’ Out – Goom Bye.
When it was over, the conference audience had been treated to a fantastic concert and the DESS website is happy to be able to share it with DESS’ members and other visitors to the website.
With it, we – Ulf and Anders – wish you A HAPPY NEW YEAR and hope that you will continue to come back here. It is all for the love of Duke as Alice Babs often said.