A Soulful Nexus

About the album

Program notes written by Derrick Skye in collaboration with Dr. Kim Nguyen Tran

A Soulful Nexus is a five movement reed quintet tracing the pathways of a musical language shaped by deep study and genuine love of several of the world’s melodic traditions. At the center of that language is ornamentation: the way a melody breathes around a note rather than simply landing on it. For me, that impulse, which I first heard in the ornamentation of solo sung Gospel music and recognized again in Persian classical music, Indian classical music, and Eastern European vocal traditions, is the connective tissue of this entire work.

From Persian classical music, the suite draws on Dastgāh-e Mâhur and Dastgāh-e Râstpanjgâh as its primary modal worlds, with Morakab-Navazi, the practice of weaving between modal areas, guiding the music through Gushé Shekaste and Darâmad Dastgāh-e Mâhur. Central to the harmonic language is the E koron, a pitch that to the Western-trained ear may initially sound like a flat microtone, but in Persian classical music is understood as its own note, unique, complete, and precise (not “between” two other notes). That distinction is not merely technical. It reflects something the suite asks of its listeners throughout: that what sounds like an imperfection from one perspective can reveal itself, over time, as an aspect of a different kind of perfection.

The four numbered movements and one roving movement contained in A Soulful Nexus each explore a convergence of musical languages through distinct rhythmic, polyphonic, groove-based, or meditative approaches, while sharing the concept that musical traditions, no matter how geographically distant, are driven by a common impulse, to make a note sing.

Movement 1 - Complementarity
Complementarity opens with two contrasting gushé pitch collections, Darâmad Dastgāh-e Mâhur and Gushé Shekaste, distinct from one another in a precise and audible way - one containing a microtone, the other without. At first, the two gushé exist separately. Members of the ensemble voice the gushé  through solos with the difference between them clear and deliberate. But as the movement unfolds, the two gushé begin to move toward and around each other, dancing in and out of contact until their differences become not a division but a conversation - two faces of the same musical concept, each made more complete by the presence of the other. 

Movement 2 - The Fifth Place 
The Fifth Place draws its title from the Persian word Panjgāh, meaning "the place of five," which names the Dastgāh modal system, specifically Dastgāh-e Râstpanjgâh, that shapes the movement's melodic and harmonic language. Paying tribute to “the place of five,” in this movement I use a five-beat rhythmic cycle that alternates with seven-beat cycles. This alternating of asymmetrical rhythmic cylces is also common in music of the Balkans. The word panj, meaning five, is not exclusively Persian, it shares a common root with Sanskrit, making the number a quietly cross-cultural presence embedded in the title. The Fifth Place is not only a modal framework in Persian classical music, it is a meeting point where rhythm, harmony, and melody converge; where traditions separated by geography share the same ground.

Movement X - Mantras 
Mantras has no fixed position within A Soulful Nexus – this movement can be placed anywhere in the suite (except the beginning or the end), wherever the performance demands. The movement is built from a multitude of small, distinct, repeating phrases distributed across the five voices, each circling independently in the manner of Buddhist mantra practice. Occasionally two musicians converge on the same phrase before separating again. Semi-rhythmic and slow, the music develops gradually while the returning phrases remain as anchors– transformation and recurrence held in balance throughout.

Movement 4 - Within 
Within sets five voices in the interlocking polyphonic tradition of Renaissance master Giovanni Palestrina, moving with the clarity of counterpoint refined over centuries, while using Dastgāh-e Mâhur, a modal framework that shares pitches with the Western major scale yet remains distinct through specific melodic contours. Inside that architecture, each musician ornaments their lines using the melodic language of Persian classical music, Eastern European folk traditions, and Indian classical practice. Beneath it, Dastgāh-e Râstpanjgâh passes through like a memory, but never fully surfaces.

Movement 5 - A Soulful Nexus 
A Soulful Nexus, which lends its name to the work as a whole, is the gravitational center of the suite. Rooted in Afro-Persian musical traditions of Southern Iran, the movement opens in a driving thirteen-beat cycle before expanding through multiple groove landscapes, meticulously composed to maintain a spontaneous feeling. The movement uses Morakab-Navazi to weave between Gushé Shekaste and Darâmad Dastgāh-e Mâhur, while mordents and fragmented motivic phrasing drawn from Bulgarian women’s choir music are heard across the five voices. Throughout the movement, musicians take turns with stomps and claps, grounding the rhythm in the body itself. A chakradar tihai (rhythmic cadence from Indian classical music) initiates the ending, before the voices transform into ornamented, linear motives inspired by oral tradition that slowly fade.