Maybe — just maybe — the Austin Artist Series concert-planners saved the best for last in the 2008-09 season.

The Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra will perform in concert beginning at 7 p.m. Saturday, April 18, in Knowlton Auditorium at Austin High School.

Admission will be by Austin Artist Series membership only.

Dancing in the aisles will be permitted as the 16-piece orchestra performs music from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s under the direction of band leader Bill Tole and featuring the vocals of Nancy Knorr.

Music history was made early on in the lives of the siblings.

The two brothers, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, started making music in the 1930s.

They were popular from the moment the downbeat sounded from the bandstand: Tommy’s alto saxophone and Jimmy’s trumpet.

They would feud and breakup, but when they played together, there was no other music the “Greatest Generation” would listen to.

The brothers joined Paul Whiteman’s orchestra, while at the same time they were recording as “The Dorsey Brothers Orchestra.”

Big band swing music was king of the radio airwaves and dance halls and ballrooms that dotted the nation.

It was the music America’s soldiers took to World War II with them.

“Amapola” and “Green Eyes,” featuring the voice of Helen O’Connell, propelled the band to the top of the record charts.

Motion pictures put the Dorsey brothers into the stratosphere of popularity.

They did, indeed, squabble and separate, but by the 1950s they were together again.

When Tommy died in 1956, his brother, Jimmy, continued to perform.

But the writing was on the wall and rock n’ roll was on the radio. A new genre of music was pushing aside big band swing music.

“So Rare” would be Jimmy’s last hit in 1957 before he stopped performing and died in October that year.

But music like that of the Dorsey brothers was, indeed, so rare, that fans demanded the band play on and it did.

First, Lee Castle picked up the band leader’s baton and then Jim Miller and now, Tole.

Ironically, the current band leader and star vocalist Knorr are both natives of Pittsburgh, Pa. continuing the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra’s Pennsylvania connection.

The 2008-09 Austin Artist Series began Oct. 25, 2008, and Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra will be the fifth and final concert of the season’s schedule.

Concert-goers will be witnesses to one of the most popular touring orchestras today and music that still resonates.

“JD’s Boogie Woogie,” “Embraceable You,” “Tangerine,” “It Had To Be You” and the classic, “Sentimental Journey.”

One can imagine, there are couples practicing their dance steps already in anticipation of a night when they will relive their dreams at the final Austin Artist Series performance of the season and make sentimental journeys of their own.