HIL JAEGER

Trained as a classical pianist and composer, Jaeger first reached success in the classical world, performing at Lincoln Center at age 17 before getting her hands on her first digital music software program. Discovering audio production, she took those classical practices and applied it to her work as producer and performer, while studying sound engineering and midi interface-building, graduating as the only woman in her entire program of Music Technology from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). Exploring the blurring of popular form with experimental practices, she is currently a candidate for an MFA in Electronic Music at Mills College. She fuses classical composition, beat making and audio production along with altered identities of her own voice to create her unique and innovative brand of avant pop.

Jaeger got her first taste of commercial success earlier this year, when in January KCRW’s Raul Campos debuted her track “Run (November)” on his afternoon show. The following day KCRW featured the track as “Today’s Top Tune.” In February the Los Angeles Times premiered her first music video for her single “Solow (April).” The video was entirely hand cut and edited by Jaeger herself, meant to reflect her specific practice of music making in which she cuts and slices hundreds of pieces of "digital" tape. This process allows her to create surgically manufactured irregularities, which are meant to explore the notions of technological flawlessness and human imperfection.

As a queer artist, Jaeger explains that “the connection to one’s own voice and the role it plays in determining gender and identity is salient, and never before have we been able to manipulate, alter, and process it so acutely and with such nuance. As a vocalist, I have focused on the ideas of composing for specifically altered identities of my voice. Through spectral analysis, physical modeling and pitch shifting, along with the creation and building of a live voice midi interface, my work focuses on the relationship between the organic and digitally rendered. I am aesthetically engaged in the play of binaries between the processed and retransmitted voice, and its role in determining singularity and identity expression.”

HIL JAEGER’s tracks

• as you need you by HIL JAEGER