The Last Concert

Product Description:

Personnel: Rosemary Clooney (vocals); Matt Catingub (conductor, alto saxophone, piano); Albert Alva, Jeff Prinz (alto saxophone); Matt Cowan (tenor saxophone); Jennifer Lovejoy (baritone saxophone); Dave Scott, Tony Bonsera, Mike Olmos (trumpet); Doug Beavers, Greg Saul (trombone); Dan Parenti (bass); Stephen Moretti (drums); Honolulu Symphony Orchestra.

Recorded live at the Neal. S. Blaisdell Concert Hall, Honolulu, Hawaii on November 16, 2001. Includes liner notes by Allen J. Sviridoff.

THE LAST CONCERT was nominated for the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album.

Recorded at the end of a Hawaiian vacation that proved to be her last, this live document is as much a display of Rosemary Clooney's onstage rapport with her audience as of her vocal skills, honed over the previous half-century, as she makes droll quips ande wryly name-checks actor George Clooney (she was his aunt).

There's an energetic version of "Old Man River" that positively crackles with excitement, and a poignant tribute to Frank Sinatra in "The Singer," composed by Clooney's drummer, Joe Cocuzzo, followed by an equally moving version of George Gershwin's "They Can't Take That Away From Me." But though THE LAST CONCERT was recorded just a couple of months after 9/11 ("God Bless America" is an affecting finale), and Clooney was to succumb to cancer seven months later, there's no sense of pathos here. Rather, one gets the lasting impression that singer, band, and audience are simply having the time of their lives.