On October 22, 2009, Manhattan School of Music's Concert Jazz Band, under the direction of Justin DiCoccio, commemorated two Clare Fischer anniversaries - both his 81st birthday and the 40th anniversary of the release of his well-regarded big band LP, Thesaurus - with a concert whose program concluded with five consecutive arrangements culled from that album. Fittingly, the five-tune sequence both began and ended, much like the album itself, with "The Duke" and "Upper Manhattan Medical Group," respectively, Fischer's tributes to his twin jazz inspirations, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. Fischer could not attend the tribute; following a medical emergency on the flight home from a family reunion in Michigan the previous year, the family had decided that air travel was "just too stressful."