Heaven is a Duke Ellington composition heard on his Second Sacred Concert, a 1968 jazz album released on Prestige. The piece runs about 4 minutes and 55 seconds and is part of the Second Sacred Concert recorded in New York in January and February 1968. The concert blended jazz with sacred music and featured Swedish singer Alice Babs in her first recording with the Ellington Orchestra, performing on Heaven as well as other numbers. Ellington described the Sacred Concerts as not a Mass but a broader spiritual expression, continuing his mix of showbiz roots with church-inspired music. The track is a standout example of Ellington’s ecumenical approach to jazz in the late 1960s.
