Walter H. Rubsamen Music Library

Ennui: Manila, 1926 is a work for jazz orchestra drawing on the title poem of Luis G. Dato's 1926 collection Manila: A Collection of Verse, one of the earliest single-author collections of Filipino poetry in English. Dato's "Ennui" is a long-lined free verse poem in the Whitmanic tradition. It catalogs the industrial sounds of colonial-era Manila and stages the speaker's strategic withdrawal from the city, drawing on the Endymion myth as a figure for willed, "open-eyed" sleep. Written under American colonial rule, the poem evokes a vivid ambivalence toward the industrialization of Manila.

In this composition, written on the centennial of the collection's publication, Harris uses Dato's poem as the narrative frame for the piece. Commissioned by Hitomi Oba for the 2026 UCLA Contemporary Jazz Ensemble with support from the UCLA Walter H. Rubsamen Music Library, Davise Fund, the work received its premiere on May 19, 2026 at Schoenberg Hall, University of California, Los Angeles, under Oba's direction.