Come Sunday: E-Z Play Today

This E-Z Play arrangement captures the spiritual depth that makes "Come Sunday" so enduring without sacrificing the harmonic sophistication that students need to encounter. The straightforward voicings invite genuine musical communication rather than note-reading alone, letting pianists focus on the piece's introspective character and its subtle harmonic movement.

Quiet and contemplative, "Come Sunday" unfolds like a personal prayer set to music. The harmony moves thoughtfully through the changes, creating moments of gentle tension that resolve into calm acceptance. This is Ellington writing for the inner life rather than the dance floor.

Piano students at the intermediate level who are ready to play jazz and popular standards but benefit from streamlined notation. Teachers looking for repertoire that builds music literacy while maintaining genuine artistic content will find this especially valuable.

• Shape the melody with restraint. Resist the impulse to push; let the quiet, reflective quality emerge through careful attention to phrasing and space between phrases.
• Explore the harmonic texture by listening to how the comping voices sit against the main line. Even in simplified voicings, these relationships create the piece's spiritual dimension.
• Find an unhurried tempo that lets the harmony breathe. The beauty lives in the unfolding of each chord rather than forward momentum.

Place this in a program celebrating American sacred and spiritual music, or pair it with other Ellington compositions to show his range as a writer. It also works beautifully as a solo piano interlude between ensemble pieces, offering the audience a moment of reflection.

• Reading jazz chord voicings and understanding their voice-leading
• Playing with rubato and musical phrasing in a non-classical context
• Interpreting harmonic rhythm and knowing when to voice-lead smoothly versus when to allow space
• Recognizing and executing the spiritual, contemplative affect required for this material