Found this posted to the Songbirds list. The news is that the Ellington
program is in fact planned to be released on disk.

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Forever Ella

Program honors first lady of the Great American Songbook

by Jay Harvey
Indianapolis Star, January 16, 2009

Ella Fitzgerald summed up for many the right way to interpret the Great
American Songbook. Patti Austin honors that legacy by keeping a place on her
schedule for performing the best songs written from the 1920s to the 1950s.

Paying tribute to Fitzgerald, who died in 1996, seemed natural for the
singer. She would need no stronger link than the fact that she also debuted
at Harlem's Apollo Theatre.

Fitzgerald caused a sensation by winning an amateur talent contest there as
a teenager in 1934, launching her career. In Austin's case, she was a
precocious preschooler, singing onstage at the invitation of her godmother,
Dinah Washington.

"Music was a great source of entertainment, fun and creativity at our
house," Austin said. Her father, a jazz musician, had gotten her used to
music as a normal part of life: "So, that interest was already there, and it
got stoked further by audience response."

Austin earned a good living in studio work and singing jingles, and she
carved out a niche as a pop/R&B singer, but had always loved the standards.

She gets a charge out of performing them with orchestras, something that
started years ago with her participation in a tribute to great American
songwriters. It was held annually the night before the Academy Awards at the
same Los Angeles hotel. Rosemary Clooney put the show together.

"At that time I wasn't using the other chop I had," Austin said, alluding to
her chief fame as the singer of "Baby Come to Me," her hit duet with James
Ingram. But Clooney knew about Austin's "other chop," and late in life --
after the songwriter salute had been discontinued -- she urged Austin never
to give up on the Great American Songbook.

"I told her, 'But that's not what the world wants to hear right now.' And
she just said, 'You are the heir apparent and you must make this music,'"
the 60-year-old singer recalled.

What cemented Austin's devotion to those songs was a two-year association
with Jule Styne, the English-born writer of "Time After Time," "Let It Snow!
Let It Snow! Let It Snow" and many other beloved songs. He died in 1994.

"That took me to PBS and performing at the White House with Marvin Hamlisch,
because Jule was being honored every other week toward the end of his life."

She acquired a whole new audience, which led to the chance to record "For
Ella" in 2002 -- the basis for the show with the Indianapolis Symphony
Orchestra. That Grammy-nominated disc foreshadowed her win in the Best Jazz
Vocal Performance category last year with "Avant-Gershwin," also recorded
with Germany's WDR Big Band. She has just finished a recording project with
the German ensemble focusing on Duke Ellington, to be released later this
year.

With the Ella show, as with the recording, Austin's not about being an
imitator. "It had to be Ella's closet I was going into, and I knew the
clothes weren't going to fit, so I had to get a great tailor," said Austin,
alluding to Patrick Williams, the arranger. "So my job was going to be to
have those clothes retailored to make sure they fit me. I didn't want to
imitate her, but pay homage to her."