Ecstatic Bruce Hornsby fans make their way inside Morristown, NJ’s MPAC theater this Friday, July 24, 2026 evening for an Indigo Park Tour concert by Bruce Hornsby and his band, The Noisemakers.
A musician who draws from a variety of musical traditions — classical, jazz, bluegrass, folk, Motown, gospel, rock, blues, and more — Bruce Hornsby has made a name for himself with his prodigious keyboard playing, top-notch songwriting, and an eclectic style of music which appeals to lovers of a variety of different musical genres.
Born in Williamsburg, Virginia, Hornsby formed his band, Bruce Hornsby and The Range, in 1984 and scored a #1 record in 1986 with his civil rights song, “The Way It Is.” He co-wrote and played piano on “The End of the Innocence” for Don Henley and played piano on Bonnie Raitt’s hit, “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” in addition to appearing on albums by Bob Dylan, Crosby, Stills and Nash, and Stevie Nicks.
Over the course of his career, the three-time Grammy winner has become known for his piano, keyboard, and accordion playing with The Grateful Dead, his work as a solo artist, in addition to his spontaneous live concerts with his touring band, Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers. His latest project is his critically acclaimed 2026 recording, Indigo Park.
Inside the MPAC auditorium, the crowd cheers as Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers —J.V. Collier on bass, Chad Wright on drums, John Mailander on fiddle/mandolin, Gibb Droll on guitar, and J.T. Thomas on keyboards — take their places on stage.
Opening with “Great Divide,” Chad Wright rhythmically beats his drums before John Mailander enters playing a jazzy fiddle part and Hornsby directs the other musicians to add to the mix. Taking a seat at the piano, Hornsby’s Southern-tinged vocal draws the listener in as he sings, “And you always go your way/And I always go mine/Maybe one day we’ll come together/Across the great divide,” on this appealing roots rocker.
Gibb Droll executes a sliding guitar solo, Mailander adds a country fiddle break, and Hornsby is featured on a cascading piano improvisation before the band drops out and J.V. Collier contributes a funky slap bass solo which elicits hoots and hollers from the crowd.
Hornsby and the band segue into a prelude which leads into the title track from his new album, “Indigo Park,” where he sings, “Oh let these days be your delight, captured in rhythm and rhyme,” on this pop-rock tune with a funk feel.
“Thank you very much! It’s good to be here!” exclaims Hornsby, who tells the audience that he not only recently performed “Indigo Park” on TV on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, but also played his next song on Jimmy Kimmel Live! joking, “We played on two Jimmy shows — the East Coast Jimmy and the West Coast Jimmy!”
Here, he and the band launch into Indigo Park’s “Memory Palace,” where he intones, “I’m building my memory palace,” on this rhythmic art-pop tune which features Droll’s swirling guitar work and Wright’s driving drums and crashing cymbals.
Hornsby’s lyric piano improvisation introduces a reimagined reggae-influenced rendition of “The End of the Innocence” where Hornsby vocalizes, “Offer up your best defense/But this is the end/This is the end of the innocence,” to avid cheers and applause. J.T. Thomas contributes a bouncy organ solo and Hornsby segues into an avant garde theme from Keith Jarrett’s Sun Bear Concerts. The arrangement continues with Mailander’s fiddle echoing Hornsby’s piano before Droll’s guitar provides counterpoint to Bruce’s vocal on the crescendoing coda.
Concertgoers hoot and holler and Hornsby announces, “We’re gonna do a very spacey song right now,” prior to explaining, “For a good number of years I did film scoring for Spike Lee” where “I wrote all these film cues and this is one of them.” Here, he and the band step into “Cleopatra Drones,” an art-rock piece composed over a drone played by the rhythm section where Hornsby chants, “Ooh, Cleopatra drones coming in low,” and Droll’s guitar and Thomas’ keyboard add instrumental color to the piece.
After Hornsby opens the show up to requests, fans shout out song titles and Hornsby obliges by performing the melodic folk-rocker, “Soon Enough.” He follows up with “Absolute Zero,” another piece he created from a Spike Lee film cue, where he sings, “Let’s go sliding down the scale,” on this jazzy chamber pop piece which features shifting time signatures.
A piano prelude of the Robert Schumann waltz, “Von fremden Ländern und Menschen,” leads into an improvisation of Hornsby’s “The Way It Is” in 3/4 time. After Hornsby suggests, “There are two ways to do this song — the regular way and the more spiritually-connected way” — he and the band take the latter approach and perform the song with great feeling.
Following the song’s “That’s just the way it is/Some things will never change” refrain, Hornsby and Mailander’s instrumental interplay leads into moving solos by Thomas on organ, Droll on guitar, and Collier on bass. The band heats up with a gospel feel, after which Hornsby plays a dazzling boogie-woogie piano improvisation prior to pounding out rumbling low notes on the piano to a warm standing ovation.
“We’ve never quite played it like that before!” exclaims Bruce as he leaves his spot at the piano and takes a seat in the front of the stage with a dulcimer where he’s joined by Wright on washboard and spoons and Mailander on mandolin.
Strumming his dulcimer, Hornsby sings, “Will you take this ride with me?” on the folksy “Mirror On the Wall,” and follows up with the Grateful Dead’s country-swing arrangement of Hornsby’s “The Valley Road” where he croons, “Sometimes I lead, sometimes I follow/This time I’ll go where she wants me to go,” before Mailander picks out a bluesy mandolin solo.
Suggesting, “This is one of our best songs on the dulcimer,” Hornsby and Co. give a tour de force performance of “Over the Rise” which starts off unplugged with dulcimer, mandolin, and washboard. As the arrangement progresses, Mailander switches over to fiddle, Wright makes his way over to the drum set, and Bruce is back on grand piano where he and band soar after he wails, “You and I could be rising so high.”
Opening with a slow piano introduction, Hornsby performs his Bruce Hornsby and The Range hit, “Mandolin Rain.”
Hornsby sings, “Listen to the mandolin rain/Listen to the music on the lake/Listen to my heart break every time she runs away,” before the full band joins in and Thomas plays a swirly organ solo and the arrangement’s tremolo coda brings hoots and hollers from the crowd.
Next, Hornsby and the band perform the quirky Indigo Park cut, “Might As Well Be Me, Florinda,” which opens with a flurry of dissonance before morphing into a New Orleans jazz tune with an old-time dance hall feel.
Hornsby announces, “We have one more song for you,” as he and the Noisemakers bounce into a song he wrote as a parent of a collegiate basketball player, the Indigo Park selection, “Ecstatic.” After Hornsby chants, “You fouled, you did it, raise your hand, admit it!” Wright impresses with a crashing drum solo on this upbeat world music-like tune and the crowd reacts with an energetic standing ovation.
“Thank you so much!” responds Hornsby as he and the band step into an encore request of Indigo Park’s “North Dakota Slate Roof” where Hornsby accompanies himself on dulcimer as he sings, “Practicing my new life well,” the audience reacts with another standing ovation, and Hornsby stands and earnestly responds, “Thanks for coming!”
To learn more about Bruce Hornsby, please go to brucehornsby.com. For information on great upcoming concerts at MPAC — including Stray Cats on August 16, Melissa Etheridge on September 9, Dion on September 10, Herman’s Hermits starring Peter Noone on September 13, The Rascals on September 17, and Air Supply on September 20 — please click on mayoarts.org.
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