Yes, Soul Chaconne, with tsumani (2023) does have an extended chaconne, but you have to wait for it. The piece begins with a toccata in which two tempos – one fast and rollicking and another faster and driven – alternate in edgy juxtapositions. Towards the beginning, a couple floating sections are also thrown into the mix and later on a flickering woodwind dance invades, but the main focus becomes triads of fast repeated notes grouped in beats of 3 or 4 16^th notes. These banks of riveting 7^th chords (which preview the harmonic colors of the chaconne) are tossed around the strings, brass, woodwinds and piano until a pounding pulse from the drumset sets up the slow groove of the chaconne, which is…

By definition, a chaconne is variation form in which a short chord progression is repeated many times while various things happen around and over it. Soul Chaconne’s progression is twelve chords long, grouped 2+2+5+3. Listeners should hear the last three chords as a reference to the most conclusive of all cadences (IV-V-I), although the last two bass notes are a half-step lower than normal, ending with a major triad in 3^rd inversion. (We’re not supposed to include this kind of numbery theory jargon in program notes, but since the progression occurs 9 times always the same ((mostly)), it seems worth noting.) Four times we hear over the chaconne progression the soulful melody it was composed to accompany, first in the low woodwinds, then in flugelhorn and tuba with sax shadow, then horn and piccolo, and finally strings with oboe shadow. Ignore that thing you hear in quarter-tone string clusters towards the beginning of the chaconne – that’s just a tease. There’s no melody for the ninth statement of the progression, just the chords played in a three-way canon between brass, strings and woodwinds.

It might be best if you listen to the tsunami without warning, but… spoiler alert… it comes in two waves with a tense lull in between. The second, longer wave really is the end. Almost.