Posted June 10, 2025
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn’t make any sense.
— Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥmmad Rūmī
Nova Plexus draws inspiration from the elegance and power of the sun, its turning movement, churning surface, and the light that it emits. The sun is impartial to everything it touches, while causing spectacular effects and reflections depending on the materials it encounters, with the capacity for immense destruction and beauty. Nova Plexus immerses the listener in a sonic world illuminated by the sun’s resplendent elegance and invigorating might.
Synthesizer, electric bass, and electric guitar are used to represent a multitude of solar emittances, from large radio waves and visible light to tiny cosmic particles, while the orchestral instruments symbolize the effects the sun has on objects and surfaces in different environments. Nova Plexus ebbs and flows between sections depicting the energetic momentum of solar activity and calmer, more meditative sections that represent the experience that living things have in the sun and their yearning for the sun.
Nova Plexus draws musically from multiple traditions around the world, including polyrhythms from West African drumming (specifically of the Ewe people), rhythmic forms from Indian classical music, large cyclical forms from Balinese gamelan, elements of electronic music, gong music of the Jarai people, and the Radif tonal system of Persian classical music which includes pitches beyond those found in equal-temperament tuning. Several rhythmic cadences called tihai (a thrice-repeated rhythmic phrase in an overlapping meter, used to end a section or conclude a piece in Indian classical music) are featured throughout Nova Plexus, including one that concludes the piece. The piece ends with increasingly dense orchestration and driving rhythms that lead to a spectacular explosion of wild staccato notes representing the concentration of energy in a single point in the sun. Under this fervent activity the lower instruments slide downward, with all the energy released only by the wave of the conductor.
Nova Plexus was commissioned by BBC Radio 3, the Berkeley Symphony, and the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra and first performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the 2023 BBC Proms. The DPO’s participation in the commission was made possible through the generosity of Alan Kimbrough. These performances mark the work’s U.S. premiere.
— Derrick Skye