How strange the change from major to minor. It casts dark shadows on brightly colored tunes. Passions rise. Hearts yearn. “Some songs just get incredibly beautiful,” said Rhan Wilson, the brain behind the first-ever An Altared Valentine’s, February 14 at Kuumbwa.

Wilson, creator of Altared Christmas, brings his gift of reinterpretation to odes of love, transforming them into new works with the change of a key. “When we put it against this darker, passionate music, sometimes it increases the beauty and sometimes it brings out the lyrics and gets kind of funny…”

The altered sound of a wine glass inspired Sayaka Yabuki’s latest piece, “Water and Wine.” The composition, which combines a chamber ensemble with live looping, has its world premiere January 15 as part of New Music Works’ first Night of the Emerging Composers at UC Santa Cruz’s Music Center Recital Hall. Also on the program are the world premieres of Remy Le Boeuf’s “The Third Elegy” and Stan Poplin’s “Detour,” along with Noah Meites’ “Bioskop.”

The four movements of “Water and Wine” take the listener on a 15-minute journey through liquid sound — from the frozen essence of Movement I to the boiling turbulence of the last movement — using violin, theremin, musical glasses, vibraphone, double bass, trumpet, percussion and looping….

Somewhere in the middle of each Michelle Chappel performance comes the moment when she looks into the audience and asks “Do you have a dream? What is it?” Following your passion is of the utmost importance to the singer-songwriter, whose fifth album Shine was released earlier this year. If Chappel hadn’t followed her bliss, she would still be teaching college psychology instead of singing December 6 at Don Quixote’s International Music Hall.

It’s been more than a decade since Chappel discovered her musical inclinations, and five years since she taught her last class at UC Santa Cruz, where she was once named “Most Inspirational Professor of Psychology….”

The guitar glides through plucked and drummed rhythms, pulling the listener into the “Cat o’ Nine Tails Waltz.” The tune, by guitarist/composer Sweeney Schragg, is on jazz trio Quasimodal’s sophomore CD of original tunes, Discordia Concors, which has its official release at Kuumbwa Jazz Center on Thursday (October 29).

With the upcoming CD release in mind, Schragg agreed to answer a few questions for Weekend Santa Cruz….

The digital age has been good to the duo behind Black Gold. First, Craigslist helped Than Luu find his way back into music. Then iTunes bumped the band onto the map by picking their song “Detroit” as a Single of the Week in October 2008. The upbeat tune with downbeat lyrics received more than 425,000 downloads and has been remixed by DJs across the country.

Even so, the Brooklyn-based band is more into live performance than taped perfection. “We really want people to see us live,” Luu said. “We’re musicians playing the songs. We’re not crazy light shows and tracks.”

Luu and musical partner Eric Ronick bring Black Gold to The Crepe Place on Sunday….

Good songs, said Gretchen Peters, deepen with your experience of life. “The bad ones, you abandon by the roadside.” Peters should know. The award-winning singer-songwriter, appearing Tuesday (September 8 ) at Don Quixote’s, has written some very good songs.

The ones most people recognize are associated with top tier country artists: “Independence Day,” Martina McBride; “The Secret of Life,” Faith Hill; “You Don’t Even Know Who I Am,” Patty Loveless; ” “If Heaven,” Andy Griggs. But there are so many more — yearning personal tunes like “Jezebel” and “When You Are Old,” the color-filled stories of “This Used to be My Town” and “Sunday Morning” — sung in Peters’ rich voice….

Terence Blanchard has never struggled to stay true to himself in the jazz world. “I have never felt the need to be or do anything outside of who I am,” emailed the trumpet player in an interview from on the road in Chicago.

What the three-time Grammy Award winner has felt the need to do is explore the world of ideas, which is where his latest CD, Choices, comes in. The recently-released album mixes a philosophical conversation between Blanchard and intellectual Cornel West, professor at Princeton University, with compositions by members of Blanchard’s quintet.

The quintet — Blanchard, bassist Derrick Hodge, drummer Kendrick Scott, saxophonist Walter Smith lll and pianist Fabian Almazan — will perform works from Choices at Kuumbwa Jazz Center on Monday, August 31….

What is it about the times that inspire bluegrass fusion? Recently, bands coming through Santa Cruz have mixed the banjo-dobro-mandolin-fiddle form with rock (Jedd Brothers), punk (The Shitkickers, The Hackensaw Boys) and jazz-funk (Grampa’s Chili). So perhaps banjo rap was inevitable. The Deadly Gentlemen bring their mix of hip-hop and Americana to Don Quixote’s on [...]

Bill “Dogfish” Pitts gets a little choked up when he talks about singing “Shallow Reef.” The song, a hard-driving ditty on The Concaves’ latest album Alive From the Red Triangle, reminisces about an absent friend.

“When I sing that song, I think of five young guys who surfed that first shortboard at the hook and how my four buddies aren’t here any more,” said Pitts, who trades vocals, lead and rhythm guitar for The Concaves with son-in-law J.D. Anderson.

It’s that personal connection to the music that binds the four members of this Santa Cruz surf band together. Each member of the group, which plays Friday (August 21) at The Catalyst, has his own story of how surf music shaped his life….

One could say the spirit of a long-dead 1970s folk singer is responsible for the Sherry Austin Band playing the inaugural Concerts in the Barn this Saturday (August 15) at the Agricultural History Project. At the very least, the music of Kate Wolf brought Austin together with Allan Molho, creator of the new two-concert series….

(Photo: The Sherry Austin Band, with Sherry Austin – left – and Sharon Allen, plays the inaugural Concerts in the Barn at the Agricultural History Project.)