works » solo/electroacoustic
listen, boy
for singing clarinetist, electronics, and animation
Commissioned by Eric Jacobs, clarinet
Year Composed: 2022
Duration: 0:11:15
Premiere: 4/10/2022: Seattle Symphony “Evolution of Voices”; Octave 9; Eric Jacobs, clarinet
listen, boy score sample
Program Notes:
Presented in a 72-speaker, near-360° audiovisual environment, listen, boy is a multimedia work for singing clarinetist, electronics, and immersive animation. Clarinetist Eric Jacobs sings and plays amid rotating spatialized sound and digital projections, interacting with the multimedia architecture. The piece repurposes fragments of female K-pop vocalists addressing male figures, reframing them to interrogate constructions of gender, masculinity, and sexuality. Through these interventions, the work traces the hidden ecologies of global pop culture, unfolding as a narrative of contemporary dating: apps, dead conversations, dopamine hits, screen addiction, and ghosting.
This is the second work from Hallyu Interventions, an on-going series of works that engages with the globalization of South Korean contemporary culture otherwise known as the hallyu wave via the sounds of Korean popular music. The first work is written for the HOCKET piano duo called soshi so$$$hi.
Clarinetist Eric Jacobs at Seattle Symphony’s Octave 9