“Jazz is America’s music and the U.S. Navy Band Commodores, the Navy’s premier jazz ensemble, have been performing the very best of big band jazz for the Navy and the nation for 50 years,” (US Navy Band). “Formed in 1969, this 18-member group continues the jazz big band legacy with some of the finest musicians in the world … The list of guest artists who have appeared with the Commodores reads like a who’s who of jazz and popular music: Ray Charles, Branford Marsalis, Clark Terry, Grover Washington Jr., Chris Potter, Jerry Bergonzi, Eddie Daniels, James Moody and many more.”
In an interview with the Navy’s publication Fanfare, alto vocalist Chelsi Vanderpol detailed some of her preparation process: “I get the opportunity to solo pretty regularly and, absolutely, I still get nervous! I think we all do — I don’t think that goes away. I just think you get better at hiding it … Einstein says something about energy not being able to be destroyed, but rather changed from one form to another. I think about that and try to change that nervous energy into power and excitement to share my message with the audience. I think what we do is so important and I think people need to hear it.”
“America the Beautiful” had a rather roundabout origin: Its lyrics were written by Katharine Lee Bates and its music was composed by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward over several years during the 1890s, although Bates and Ward never met. The song wasn’t published until 1910. Among its many covers, the tune is perhaps most closely linked with Ray Charles, whose 1972 rendition was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2005. The Navy Band’s arrangement, recorded here in 2019, rises a whole step at 2:16.
Here’s a first: a submission which not only includes an exacting level of theory detail, but is a live performance by the contributor, leading a quartet! Cole Fortier is an undergrad at the SUNY’s Crane School of Music. Thank you for such a detailed description of this genius tune’s structure, Cole!
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From Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello’s masterwork album, Painted from Memory (1998), comes the track “Such Unlikely Lovers.” It’s a truly unique and incredible song for many reasons.
First, it seems to be the one lyric on the album where everything goes right for the main character! While this album is an epic and stunning meditation on heartbreak, the upbeat and colorful narrative of this song brings the variation of levity and charm to the ordeal. Costello said that he heard the music that Bacharach presented to him for this track and immediately envisioned a lyric based around a chance romantic encounter on the street. The sense of spontaneity, optimism, and energy in the lyric is reflected so excitingly in the music. This song grooves so hard — more than almost any other song on the album. The constantly shifting tonality and subtle meter changes (a Bacharach trademark) truly embody the spontaneous spirit that drives the song.
As the song begins, it’s difficult to discern the key; the riff essentially vamps between a Gsus chord and an Fsus chord (Eb/F to be specific). The vocal then enters on a C minor chord, which contextualizes the previous Eb/F chord as being a part of the key signature of C minor. More specifically, this section of the song can be interpreted as C Dorian with the raised sixth scale degree of the A natural. The most intriguing harmonic shift happens very quickly though as an F#min7 chord occurs on the word “gray” (0:24) and subsequently resolves to a Bmin9 chord. This modulation from C minor to B minor is masterfully handled through carrying over the common tone of the A natural from the C Dorian mode to the F#min7 chord. The entire modulatory sequence repeats again at the lyrics “when you look how you feel” (0:30) — but this time, the song continues on in a tonality much more closely associated with B minor than C minor (starting at “Listen now”, 0:40). After the chorus, the opening riff returns at 1:17. Weirdly enough though, the opening riff is played 2.5 steps down and is never played in its original tonality again.
The smooth and nuanced modulation patterns in “Such Unlikely Lovers” through the use of common tones really show the genius of Bacharach’s writing while also supporting the energized and spontaneous lyric that Costello wrote.
“Mambo Italiano” was originally written by Bob Merrill in 1954 for the American singer Rosemary Clooney, and is a parody of genuine mambo music. Bette Midler included a cover of the tune on her tribute album to Clooney, released in 2003 (following Clooney’s death in 2002) and produced by Barry Manilow. “I wanted to be respectful, but I felt we had to find something new to say as well,” Midler said in the liner notes for the album. “And in these (mostly) new arrangements…I believe we have.”
The track begins in G minor and shifts up a half step at 2:16.
“Dubbed ‘The First Lady of Song,’ Ella Fitzgerald was the most popular female jazz singer in the United States for more than half a century,” according to Fitzgerald’s website. “In her lifetime, she won 13 Grammy awards and sold over 40 million albums.
Her voice was flexible, wide-ranging, accurate and ageless. She could sing sultry ballads, sweet jazz and imitate every instrument in an orchestra. She worked with all the jazz greats, from Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Nat King Cole, to Frank Sinatra, Dizzy Gillespie and Benny Goodman. (Or rather, some might say all the jazz greats had the pleasure of working with Ella.) She performed at top venues all over the world, and packed them to the hilt. Her audiences were as diverse as her vocal range. They were rich and poor, made up of all races, all religions and all nationalities. In fact, many of them had just one binding factor in common – they all loved her.”
Her relentlessly energetic rendition of the children’s song “Old MacDonald,” performed on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, begins in Eb major. Starting at 0:18, she skips effortlessly upward through a series of half-step modulations, ending in Ab major.
We usually feature an up-tempo track on Fridays. But in light of this week’s invasion of Ukraine, focusing on music’s ability to bolster our common humanity seemed like the best choice for today.
“Finlandia is probably the most widely known of all the compositions of Jean Sibelius,” (This is Finland). “Most people with even a superficial knowledge of classical music recognise the melody immediately. The penultimate hymn-like section is particularly familiar; soon after it was published, the ‘Finlandia Hymn’ was performed with various words as far afield as the USA.”
In 1899, Sibelius composed the music “for a series of tableaux illustrating episodes in Finland´s past … a contribution towards the resistance (against) Russian influence … While Finland was still a Grand Duchy under Russia, performances within the empire had to take place under the covert title of “Impromptu” … In Finland, the ‘Finlandia Hymn’ was not sung until Finnish words for it were written by the opera singer Wäinö Sola in 1937. After the Russian aggression against Finland in 1939 (the Winter War), the Finnish poet V.A. Koskenniemi supplied a new text, the one that has been used ever since. Sibelius arranged the Hymn for mixed choir as late as 1948.”
Keith Bosley’s English translation of Koskenniemi´s text:
Finland, behold, thy daylight now is dawning, the threat of night has now been driven away. The skylark calls across the light of morning, the blue of heaven lets it have its way, and now the day the powers of night is scorning: thy daylight dawns, O Finland of ours!
Finland, arise, and raise towards the highest thy head now crowned with mighty memory. Finland, arise, for to the world thou criest that thou hast thrown off thy slavery, beneath oppression´s yoke thou never liest. Thy morning´s come, O Finland of ours!
The lyrics most frequently used in modern-day protest and worship settings were updated yet again by Lloyd Stone. The third verse is attributed to Georgia Harkness:
This is my song, O God of all the nations, a song of peace for lands afar and mine; this is my home, the country where my heart is; here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine: but other hearts in other lands are beating with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.
My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean, and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine; but other lands have sunlight too, and clover, and skies are everywhere as blue as mine: O hear my song, thou God of all the nations, a song of peace for their land and for mine.
May truth and freedom come to every nation; may peace abound where strife has raged so long; that each may seek to love and build together, a world united, righting every wrong; a world united in its love for freedom, proclaiming peace together in one song*
This contemporary arrangement of the piece (2021), performed by British vocal octet ensemble VOCES8, is by the group’s tenor, Blake Morgan. VOCES8 “is proud to inspire people through music and share the joy of singing. Touring globally, the group performs an extensive repertoire both in its a cappella concerts and in collaborations with leading orchestras, conductors and soloists. Versatility and a celebration of diverse musical expression are central to the ensemble’s performance and education ethos.”The Guardian describes the ensemble’s sound as “the beauty of perfectly blended unblemished voices.”
After beginning in G# major, there is a modulation up to B major at 2:36. Many thanks to Jackie D. for bringing this arrangement to our attention!
Composer/songwriter/pianist/vocalist Gabriel Kahane occupies a very specific part of the musical firmament. His work has ranged from pop-inflected solo voice and piano to orchestral and chamber works. “I’m sort of trying to reconcile the very direct songwriter in me with the guy who’s interested in architecture and formal rigor and harmonic and rhythmic expansiveness or complexity,” (WBUR).
Kahane’s label, Nonesuch, describes his upcoming 2022 release Magnificent Bird: “The album … chronicles the final month of a year spent off the internet … (It) revels in the tension between quiet, domestic concerns, and the roiling chaos of a nation and planet in crisis. ‘Sit Shiva,’ the album’s first single … finds Kahane skirting the rules of his digital hiatus in order to mourn, online, the death of his maternal grandmother; in typical fashion, he mines not just pathos, but humor and grace amidst his family’s grief.
In October 2020, the final month of his tech sabbatical, Kahane set out to write a song every day. ‘I wanted to create an aural brain scan at the end of this experiment,’ he explains, ‘and to give myself permission to write about small things, rather than trying to distill the enormity of the moment into grand statements. … My internet hiatus grew out of a belief that at root, our digital devices reinforce the fiction that convenience and efficiency have intrinsic value. That has implications with respect to climate crisis, to inequality, to our (in)ability to see ourselves in each other, to build the kinds of coalitions necessary to make a more just world. I wanted to leave it all behind not as a further expression of techno-pessimism, but rather in search of a positive alternative.'”
“The way the story is sometimes erroneously told, The Beach Boys were nothing more than a convenient vehicle for Brian Wilson’s incendiary songwriting and brilliant producing,” (American Songwriter). “Of course, that misconception overlooks the crucial contributions of the talented men at Brian’s side bringing his artistic vision to thrilling life with their vocals. It also neglects to take into account the years when the troubled genius contributed only sporadically to the band’s output. Consider 1971’s album Surf’s Up, where the rest of the band picked up the songwriting slack for their leader and Bruce Johnson’s wistful waltz ‘Disney Girls (1957)’ stood out as one of the disc’s finest moments.
If you’re not listening closely enough, you might read the title, hear some of the references in Johnston’s opus, and think that it’s easy nostalgia, something in which The Beach Boys have been known to trade. But what you come to realize, either by perusing the lyrics or listening to the subtle ache in those ‘oohs and aahs,’ is that the ‘fantasy world’ on which the narrator fixates is just that, an idealized vision of happiness that he hasn’t yet attained. ‘Oh, reality, it’s not for me / And it makes me laugh.’ … The unspoken context is that this song comes from a touring musician leading what was likely a hectic life with one of the most famous bands on the planet …”
After starting in F# major, we reach a dreamy bridge at 2:07. At 2:28, the groove falls away as the layered vocals briefly take on the oblique, rubato harmonies of a Barbershop quartet, proclaiming that “… she likes church bingo chances and old-time dances.” At 2:37, a strong IV/V in the new key (G major) leads us to another verse (2:45) as the 3/4 time resumes. The track could be a more grown-up echo of the band’s 1966 hit “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.”
“The past year has had its ups and downs. I had the incredible opportunity to do concerts in exciting places like London and Australia, but I also learned how lonely life on the road can be — and how returning home is even lonelier when there’s nobody to return to.
Two years ago when I turned 30, my heart found itself in a place it wasn’t expecting to go. It was, for the first time, ready to start a family. In the song “Nothing More,” sung on What I Wanna Be When I Grow Up by the wonderful Christopher Sieber, I wrote about my yearning to leave more than a song behind as my legacy. I knew there was something major missing from my life, and I knew exactly what it was: a child.
After giving everything I had to a relationship that fell apart only a year later, the question became, How much more of myself did I really have left to give? When the relationship ended despite my best efforts, I felt numb to everything around me and completely exhausted. But more than that, I found that the one constant in my life, writing, was suddenly not happening. It was like I’d been put on pause. I couldn’t find words; I couldn’t hear melody. I felt trapped. Though I had so much to say, I couldn’t find the right words with which to say it. I’d sit at the piano and nothing matched the emotions I felt in that moment. They were just words and notes. Words and notes without any meaning to them.
Here I was at a crossroads; I wanted a family, yet the family that I’d been building with my partner was now nothing more then crumpled pieces of unusable lyrics filling up my floor. I was no longer in control of anything.
To understand me is to understand one important thing — I write about my life and all that comes with it. To say that my music and lyrics define me is an understatement. I put every element of myself into song. All of my secrets, inner turmoil, and celebrations are musicalized. It’s my therapy.
Day after day, I kept sitting down at the piano, hoping that some sort of genius idea would present itself. Then one day I started slowly writing again — When the life you had planned / Slowly slips through your hands / When it feels like you just slept through all the best years of your life / When the heart’s beyond repair / When you wake and no one’s there / When your home consists of only you / Is there anything worth holding on to?
That’s all I was able to write at the time. I couldn’t find other words to describe how completely trapped I felt or how losing the ability to explain it in song made me feel even lonelier.
I needed to take a break — to just step away from the piano and from everything around me. I took a vacation to Italy. No phone. No computer. Traveled for two weeks. Stayed in the nicest hotels. Got fat. Drank wine. Ate more gelato than I care to admit. And just breathed. In a relationship it’s easy to forget yourself. This was my chance to get to know me again.
When I returned I put all my energy into finishing the new album. As minutes turned into months we had 11 songs finished. But my coproducer and arranger of the album, Jesse Vargas, insisted that we add one more. I hadn’t sat at the piano since I returned from Italy, too afraid to find that I may still be in the same place I was before I left.
I sat down. Put my hands on the keys. I took a breath. I wrote. When you’re so far from home / When you’ve lost signs of hope / When you’re searching for salvation / But there’s none that you can find / When the words have disappeared / When the melody’s unclear / When there’s nothing left inside of you, is there anything worth holding on to? I sat for a minute … there was still something left to say. Cause I will still be holding on / To everything worth holding on to.
I finished — six months after I’d started it, but it was finally finished.
Jesse decided that if this song was going to be the one to complete the album, it had to be stripped down. On an album filled with lavish orchestrations and arrangements, he believed that it needed nothing more than its lyrics, its melody, the incomparable voice of Crystal Monee Hall, and a piano.
The day I released the album I sat on my couch, studying the cover. I took out my two previous albums, Dreaming Wide Awake and Keys, and put all three of them on my dining room table. Taking a close look I realized that for now these are my children. And I couldn’t be more proud of them. For the first time in over a year, my heart felt full again.
An hour later I started planning the next birth.”
Performed here by Matt Bloyd and Chrissy Metz, the song begins in C, modulates up to Eb for Metz’s entrance on the second verse at 2:04, and lands in F at 4:05.
Puzzle Canon “celebrates the aesthetic value of symmetry in music. We hope to introduce you to a centuries-old, little-known but fascinating tradition, by featuring outstanding examples by both well-known and obscure composers. On this site, compositions of precise symmetry are featured …”
The site features an a cappella piece Johannes Brahms, improbably arranged for four soprano parts: “The four-voice, posthumously published modulating canon “Mir lächelt kein Frühling” is much like a round, but each new entry enters a melancholy semitone lower than the last. Once all the voices have entered and as each of these voices makes its way through the 16-measure melody, what we hear is a four-measure unit or iteration descending each time by semitone.”
Berklee describes its Indian Ensemble: “What started out as a class at Berklee College of Music in 2011 has become one of the hippest global acts to emerge from Boston … Founded by Indian Berklee alumna and faculty member Annette Philip ’09, the ensemble provides an open and inclusive creative space for musicians from all over the world to explore, study, interpret, and create music influenced by the rich and varied mosaic that is Indian music today.” The Ensemble has garnered more than 200 million YouTube views, at one point comprising over 50% of Berklee’s total. “‘Indian music wasn’t being taught in Berklee as formally as other genres, so we founded this ensemble … The idea is to nurture the next generation of musicians from India and given them a pathway into the global music scene. We have people from 44 countries in this ensemble,'” Philip explained in an India Today interview.
From the 2019 video’s description: “In December 2018, the Berklee India Exchange team got an unusual request: to reimagine and interpret a Metallica classic of our choice. The Berklee Indian Ensemble has always been known to experiment, but this one took us by surprise. The brainchild of Mirek Vana, the Metallica Project at Berklee is a Boston Conservatory at Berklee and Berklee College of Music collaboration featuring a contemporary dance reimagination of Metallica’s songs, arranged, recorded, and performed in four different musical styles, the fourth being Indian music … ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ felt like a natural fit, and soon, a new version came to life.”
After starting in E minor, there’s a shift to a quieter instrumental interlude in C# minor (3:40 – 3:57) before the original key returns.
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