Category: Elise

Bruce Hornsby | Preacher In the Ring, Part 1

“Bruce Hornsby cracked the music world (four) decades ago, making smooth, contemplative piano-pop with his band The Range. But if ‘The Way It Is’ is how you remember him today, you’ve missed a lot.” (NPR). “Since his hitmaking days in the 1980s, Hornsby has been a touring member of the Grateful Dead, gone bluegrass with Ricky Skaggs, and played jazz with Wayne Shorter and Charlie Haden.

(Hornsby): ‘ … This music that I’ve been so interested in for a good number of years now allows for a greater depth and variety of expression. If I’m singing a song that I’ve written about the snake-handling congregations of Appalachia, and it’s sort of a bluesy boogie piece, I could just play the standard sort of blues-based music in the right hand. But I feel like that’s a little straight, and goes down a little too easy.’ Regarding his concert repertoire, which includes his hits — but sometimes extended improvisations fueled by 20th century classical composers, too: ‘Sure, there are some people there who are there for a nostalgic reason. I try to be nice to them, and every few songs, play one of those songs. But there’s a very sizable contingent of people there who wish I would never play those songs. They understand they have to sort of suffer through them, because they know why I’m doing it, but they really wish I wouldn’t. It makes it so that I sort of get yelled at by both factions; I just catch it from all sides. But that’s fine. It’s my lot in life because I’ve continued to move on, and I haven’t stayed the same. And that’s, to me, the way a musical life should be: Keep on pushing, keep on evolving and changing.'”

“Preacher In the Ring, Part 1,” the tune about snake handling at church mentioned in the interview, is a track from Hornsby’s 1998 album Spirit Trail. After two verses, choruses, and a few piano features in C mixolydian, 3:45 brings a transition which stumbles and sputters a bit before settling into and unlikely F# mixolydian. Around the 4:20 mark, the tonality moves back towards a C mixolydian outro.

Madison Cunningham | Take Two

“(Madison) Cunningham has been described as the musician’s musician …” (Here Comes the Song). “We prefer to be more inclusive and regard her as the discerning listener’s musician … the Californian achieves an almost classical sophistication in beautiful ballads such as ‘Shore,’ the Joni-esque ‘Take Two‘ and ‘My Full Name‘ (on 2025’s Ace). The young Madison was experimenting with open tunings before she discovered Joni Mitchell; secular sounds took time to woo her away from the constrictions of megachurch worship music.

… Her approach to melody is fearlessly innovative, the candour of her lyrics unflinching … At 29, Cunningham has survived a period of turbulence – married young, divorced young – normally experienced by people much older than her. Instead of retreating, she turned the ordeal into a meditation on the difference between happiness and contentment. ‘Happiness is hollow and shiny, contentment is rooted and rich and doesn’t deny sadness or joy,’ she told Leo Sidran on his Third Story podcast. ‘We want to numb pain away and that just means you numb everything else too. Contentment isn’t afraid of the feeling of pain … I’m learning how to be alone and to not feel loneliness. Those don’t have to be the same thing.’”

Joni-esque isn’t an adjective to be applied lightly. But given the broad harmonic vocabulary, the shifting instrumental textures, and cutting lyrics on offer here, it seems fitting. Beginning in A minor, “Take Two” progresses through two verses before a more strongly textured C minor verse falls into place at 1:41. At 2:26, there’s a return to the original key.

Snarky Puppy + Metropole Orkest | The Curtain

“Jazz has developed virtually since its inception through a close but often uneasy relationship between recorded media and live performance,” (UCLA Ethnomusicology Review). “Think of the ‘classic’ recordings that are celebrated as paragons of jazz artistry, but also of the common admonishment that any true experience of jazz is a live one, in which musicians and audience members commune with one another in a unique, never-to-be-repeated musical and social event. If recent trends are any indication, however, many jazz musicians do not view these modes of performance as irreconcilable … Snarky Puppy, led by bassist and composer Michael League … tour(s) the world extensively, introducing audiences to their exciting genre-b(l)ending style … They also invite an audience into the recording session, which sits among the musicians and listens through headphones. In this way, Snarky Puppy cultivates the intimacy and energy of live performance, but also retains the advantages of an outfitted recording studio.

Sylva … finds the band in the Netherlands to work with the Metropole Orkest, conducted by Jules Buckley … The theme of Sylva (2015) is the forest. … The album’s high point is ‘The Curtain.’ … this tune was the most challenging for the band, with sections featuring odd meters, multiple key changes, and forms with an odd number of bars … Jay Jennings’ flugelhorn solo is outstanding, his lyrical playing bolstered by the tasteful interactivity of the rhythm section and some beautifully building orchestral background figures. A new groove introduces League’s similarly impressive bass solo (well-deserved accolades for his roles as leader and composer mean he is sometimes overlooked as a stellar bassist) and a funky, virtuosic organ solo by Cory Henry. The musicians look on wistfully during Bill Laurance’s lovely, Chopin-esque piano cadenza, before joining him for a closing waltz.”

The piece begins with a strings feature in G minor, joined by building percussion at 0:51 and then going on to persist through various moods and meters. At 3:22, we hit uneven harmonic ground as the flugelhorn solo builds. The full instrumentation of the Metropole is then put through its paces until the 7:54 mark, where a calmer feeling prevails, along with a shift to F minor. By the ending, the piece has shifted back to a softer-spoken feel in G (major, minor, etc.).

Ludwig van Beethoven | Piano Sonata #9 in E Major, Op. 14 #1, second movement


“The first sonata of Beethoven’s Op. 14 makes a lyrical counterpoint to its predecessor, the Pathetique,” (BBC). “Along with the second in G, it was astutely dedicated to Baroness Josefa von Braun, whose husband was court theatre director in Vienna and thus provided the key to the composer’s orchestral ambitions. It was the Baron who allotted Beethoven the date and venue for the premiere of his First Symphony in 1800.

The E major Sonata is one of the best documented in Beethoven’s sketchbooks, which date its composition to 1798-9. Two years later he was persuaded to rearrange it for string quartet, transposing it to the key of F major.”

Beginning in E minor, the tonality shifts briefly several times throughout, but perhaps most strongly 1:31 to C major. At 2:42, there is a return to the original key.

Whitney Houston | I Love the Lord

“We may never see the likes of a Richard Smallwood in gospel music again … Smallwood was an innovative songwriter and director who blended skillfully the majesty of classical choral music with the Black church writ large,” (Journal of Gospel Music). “His songs and arrangements possess an intensity that crosses denominational boundaries. Whether Pentecostal, Baptist, AME, or CME, congregants know the catalog of Richard Smallwood. It has its own brilliance, its own timbre. You recognize it when you hear it.

… His music even made the silver screen; Whitney Houston and the Georgia Mass Choir sang his arrangement of “I Love the Lord,” recorded originally in the late 1970s by the Union Temple Young Adult Choir, for the 1996 holiday film The Preacher’s Wife.”

Richard Smallwood reported that “[The music supervisor for The Preacher’s Wife] told me ‘I Love the Lord’ was one of Whitney’s favorite songs and one that she had grown up singing in church,” (Brooklyn White-Grier). “It also was a song that she wanted to do in the movie. When I found out — excited is an understatement! One of my songs in a major motion picture sung by one of the greatest singers ever, was a dream I never thought was possible.”

Beginning in C major with a solo section for Houston, the tune swells with the addition of choir and string section as the tonality climbs to Db major at 1:29. The texture continues to strengthen through the 4:00 mark, where the track ends with a softer-spoken string section.

Frank Zappa | What’s New in Baltimore?

” … This looming existential dread and the small, conservative California towns in which he was raised were a powerful force against which Zappa reacted, with his music that constantly defied convention and conformity,” (Baltimore Sun). “As his former percussionist Ruth Underwood says in an interview, ‘he was a walking mass of contradictions but he was consistent in those contradictions.’ He was a wild man with a psychedelic imagination who eschewed drug use, and an anti-establishment artist with a keen sense of business acumen.

… a complicated man, an exacting artist and a wholly singular visionary. His bandmates assert that he was a demanding songwriter and bandleader, constantly striving for perfection, rare to dole out compliments. If the outsize legacy of his work bears any consistency, it’s in the purest expression of his vision, whatever that might have been. Zappa repeatedly states that he made the music that he wanted, needed, to hear … “

Zappa’s album Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention, was released in 1985. Its title was a reaction to efforts by groups such as the Parents Music Resource Center urging the US Congress to advance legislation labeling pop and rock albums featuring controversial lyrics. The initial E minor section of “What’s New in Baltimore” alternates with an E major section, first heard from 0:16 – 0:26. At 0:52, a chaotic extended multi-key midsection launches. The 2:00 mark brings us to a relatively straightforward guitar solo section in E major, written over only two chords; for a change, all mallet instruments are banned during this passage, which turns out to also be an extended outro.

Amy Grant | That’s What Love Is For

“If you were listening to any kind of normal radio in the early 90s, you remember ‘Baby, Baby,’ which hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, as well as ‘Every Heartbeat,’ which hit No. 2. ‘That’s What Love Is For,’ ‘Good For Me’ and ‘I Will Remember You’ all were Top 20 hits as well,” (Daily Vault).

The best part about (1991’s Heart in Motion) … is not the success it brought Grant as much as the way it openly addressed important issues in life. ‘Ask Me’ talks about how faith can help heal a person’s past, specifically child abuse; ‘That’s What Love Is For’ addresses that relationships are tough and take work. Strength and hope are the themes of Heart in Motion … The simplicity of Grant’s voice with her honest lyrics contrast what so many other big names (Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Christina Aguilera) attempt to achieve.”

“That’s What Love is For” begins in E major, building gradually through its first two verses. The chorus, in C# major, then appears with great fanfare at 1:08; the video further obliges the mood change with a shift from black and white to full color. At 1:42, we dive back into another verse — in the original key and the original black and white! The pattern continues until 3:04, when we stumble into D major as we hop over yet another B+W/color border.

Rod Stewart | You’re In My Heart (The Final Acclaim)

“Over the course of his career, Rod Stewart has … written several songs that turned into modern standards; he’s sung with the Faces, who rivaled the Rolling Stones in their prime; and he’s had massive commercial success” as a solo artist (AllMusic). “He’s one of rock & roll’s best interpretive singers, as well as an accomplished, innovative songwriter whose work created a raw, loose, and charming combination of folk, rock, blues, and country. After Stewart became successful, he began to lose the rootsier elements of his music, adapting his style to suit the times, leading to smash hits in the disco, new wave, and MTV eras.”

Stewart’s 1977 release “You’re In My Heart,” a single from Footloose and Fancy Free, hit #1 on the Australian and Canadian pop charts, peaking at #4 on the Billboard pop chart in the US and in the top ten in Ireland, the Netherlands, and the Stewart’s native UK.

After a start in B major, the soft-spoken mid-tempo tune’s chorus shifts to A major from 1:36 – 1:54 before returning to its original key. The pattern continues throughout. Surprisingly, the song performed much better on the singles charts than “Hot Legs,” the album’s lead track, which was much more in keeping with Stewart’s raucous image at the time; Billboard called “Hot Legs” a “blistering blues rocker.”

George Michael | You Have Been Loved

“Think back to August 1997. George’s album Older had already been out for a year, spinning off a quintet of top 3 singles in the UK whilst being largely ignored in the US,” (The Singles Jukebox). “And then the heretofore unthinkable happened: Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car crash in Paris. In light of Diana’s death — not to mention that most knew of the friendship between George and Diana — ‘You Have Been Loved’ took on added resonance and became a profoundly moving, albeit unintentional, tribute to the late Princess.

‘You Have Been Loved’ was included a few months later on the Diana, Princess of Wales: Tribute compilation, alongside a number of suitably somber songs, both previously released and newly recorded. ‘Loved’ is the second song on the double album, behind only ‘Who Wants to Live Forever’ by Diana’s beloved Queen, and immediately prior to Annie Lennox’s ‘Angel.'”

The tune begins with an E minor that spends very little time on its tonic chord. But after briefly wending its way through several other tonalities, the chorus ends squarely on C major, starting at 2:37 and running until an interlude and verse 2 begin at at 3:04 in the original key. The track’s final measures are also in C major.