India’s musical culture has bravely resisted the global aspirations  of European classical music, despite nearly a century of English  dominance. It has, however, readily entered into dialogue with  African-American jazz, with which it shares the structural—and  often primary—role of improvisation. Composers reconciling  South Asian traditions with a Western vision of sonic modernity  remain rare, for this is an exceptionally difficult union. Shirish  Korde has staked his approach on the precise imitation of  traditional improvised passages within the sonic and harmonic  context of modern chamber music. He has therefore based his  mature compositional language on an in-depth listening to classical  Hindustani recordings and extremely precise notated transcriptions  of them. Only in this way could he understand the nuances that  had long fascinated him intuitively, especially the way melody  is led using quartertones and microglissandi. His next task was  to translate the specific character of North Indian melos onto  Western instruments and to develop special playing techniques.  Among his favourites were the European violin—long present,  in any case, in Indian musical practice—to which he has devoted  several concert, chamber, and solo works. Vak, in the title of this  violin piece, is a Vedic goddess. As the embodiment of divine  speech, she inspires poets and visionaries. She is also sometimes  called the mother of emotions and the friend of musicians.