Story
The full live performance of Harel Shachal's long-form composition "Ein."
This full live performance presents "Ein" in its larger ceremonial frame, recorded at Beit Mizrah Maarav in May 2019. What appears in the shorter excerpt unfolds here as a long-form composition: one maqam chosen for the work, a fixed structure, and a spiritual arc designed to carry the listener through listening rather than spectacle.
As Harel Shachal describes it, "Ein" opens with the presentation of the maqam, moves into an extended instrumental peshrev, passes through four sung sections, and then continues into further instrumental movements. The aim is not only musical development but a spiritual experience of elevation. The rhythms are grounded in the heartbeat, the modal shifts follow the inner logic of the maqam, and the words speak of the human longing to know the creator, to love creation in all its forms, and to tell that love story through breath, being, and gratitude.
The name itself deepens the piece. In Persian, "Ayin" means ritual; in the Mevlevi tradition it names the composition accompanying the Sufi sema ceremony. Read through Hebrew resonance, it also evokes self-emptying, disappearance, and the undoing of ego. That double meaning makes this hour-long performance more than a concert document: it is a work built to move between ceremony, devotion, and dissolution.
