The device looks like a hipster's wristwatch — boxy but sort of cool looking. It would be too big and obvious if it was on 007's wrist, but then it's NOT a watch even though the dramatic power it unleashes might well have come from the arcane laboratory of gadget maker Q.

At a Wednesday night rehearsal for the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra, strapped to the left wrist of music director/conductor Toshiyuki "Toshi" Shimada, the device is almost too small to see from the seats inside the Garde Arts Center. But, during the first-ever run-through of a new work called "Scattering," the movements Shimada makes with his left hand while conducting the piece trigger electronic sounds — haunting and evocative swells — that serve as dramatic counterpoint to the live music being performed onstage. The effect is mesmerizing and wonderfully empathetic to the score — it's PART of the score — and the fusion of live music and the real-time electronics component is very possibly unprecedented in classical music.

"Scattering" — the orchestral score, the electronic samples AND Shimada's "wristwatch" — are all the unified efforts of New London's Joesph Butch Rovan, a longtime ECSO fan who is not, it's fair to say, the typical season ticket holder.

Rovan is a multi-instrumentalist, media artist and performer at Brown University, where he serves as chair of the music department and co-directs the MEME (Multimedia & Electronic Music Experiments) program in Computer Music. Prior to joining Brown, he directed CEMI, the Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia at the University of North Texas. With his wife Katherine Bergeron, president of Connecticut College, he also oversees that school's Music 101 seminar where students are introduced and integrated into the creative and technical process of songwriting and recording.

In that context, it wasn't particularly unusual that, a few years back, when Shimada and ECSO executive director Caleb Bailey were already discussing plans for the 2021-22 season — the organization's 75th anniversary — the idea of doing something new and modern resonated. Rovan, who is friends with both men, suggested a fusion of performance and electronics with the idea Shimada could trigger sampled electronic sounds during a concert.

"Butch was certainly a known artist, and I'd been to some of his (electronic music) installations at Brown," Bailey says. "It's really impressive work. And what he was suggesting for us was really compelling and different. The conductor rarely creates sound at a concert; he's passing his creativity through motion to the musicians. This would change that dynamic and make the conductor a participant in the creation of sound. We think it's very important for an orchestra and its audience to evolve, and what Butch was suggesting was significantly innovative."

The world premiere of "Scattering" happens Saturday during the ESCO's "Electric Romance" concert. Also on the program is "Rush: Concerto for Alto Saxophone" by another renowned Connecticut composer, Kenneth Fuchs. "Rush" features the orchestra's Joshua Thomas on alto sax. These contemporary works are smoothly balanced with two choices from the repertoire, Shostakovich's Waltz. No. 2 and Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet: Suite No. 2.

From random beginnings

In the home where Rovan and Bergeron live in New London, there's a letterpress print of four short poems by the late William Meredith, the Ledyard resident who served as U.S. Poet Laureate.

"We've looked at those wonderful poems hundreds of times and they're about the randomness of connection," Rovan says in a conversation last week. "The print itself is captivating in its imagery and the layout and structure of the words, and it struck me how beautiful randomness can be. For instance, we as humans are drawn to maps: where do the people we know live and why do they live there? It's random connection, and I think about the spiritual underpinnings of those things and how they connect us with the people we love."

With those observations as inspiration, Rovan went to work. He started to build and program the prototype of the "wristwatch" device in the fall of 2019 and had it ready in spring of 2020. He called it TOSHI: The Orchestral Synthesis Human Interface.

"I was then just starting to write the orchestral music when COVID hit, and of course it was an overwhelming and random event that affected the piece dramatically. Shortly after that was the murder of George Floyd. It was so awful in the scope of injustice that it, too, significantly influenced the piece," Rovan remembers.

Two words

Rovan explored these motifs on several levels as a composer. Recalling the time-honored tradition of composers using what might be called cryptograms within their scores — words hidden in the music through notation — Rovan utilized COVID and GEORGE in "Scattered."

And the process of fitting those words into the music resulted in profound — and randomly connected — directions for the work.

"All the material in the piece is based on those two words," Rovan says, "and they yielded very different content."

Indeed, a listen to the ECSO's first-ever run through of "Scattering" at the Wednesday rehearsal is to immediately infer the "COVID" and "George" sections of the work. The symphony starts with an ominous, agitated bombast suggesting the sudden and swift appearance and spreading of the disease. Later sections morph into a softer, meditative flow; not a dirge, exactly, but a lovely homage reflecting the sorrow over the loss of Floyd and indeed the circumstances that resulted in his death. There's just enough dissonance to maintain a haunting quality and not a lullaby.

After the first pass without the TOSHI, so the orchestra members can familiarize themselves with the material en masse, Shimada attached the device. Things are about to enter an entirely unprecedented phase.

As always, the orchestra will play the written music with nuances implied and evoked by the physical gestures of the Shimada's hands. Now, though, the score is augmented by TOSHI, which tracks the movement, direction and acceleration of Shimada's left hand and those gestures will trigger a scattering of electronic sounds that, Rovan says, "both comment on the orchestra and foretell what's to come."

Ignition, liftoff

With Rovan watching from the mixing board at the back of the Garde, "Scattering" is played again. This time, the different gestures of Shimada's left hand become increasingly mesmeric as tides of sound — imagine an eerie chorus of the dead seemingly summoned by Shimada's shamanic movements — exhale from the quad speakers throughout the hall in counterpoint the live music of the orchestra. It's an outstanding and effective component and, ever professional, the ECSO members perform their parts perfectly in spite of this totally unfamiliar ghost choir capering with and around them.

When the piece is finished, Shimada turns and offers Rovan a quick nod of acknowledgement and appreciation. Time marches, after all, and the rest of the program still must be rehearsed.

Rovan comes out from behind the mixing board, hugs Bergeron and breathes a sigh of satisfaction. "I was excited and a little nervous," he says, smiling. "But I think it went really well. And TOSHI worked!"

If you go

Who: The Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra

What: "Electric Romance" including the world premiere of Butch Rovan's "Scattering" 

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Garde Arts Center, 325 State St., New London

How much: $12-$65

Good to know: Masks must be worn inside the Garde

Also good to know: See a conversation between Rovan and ECSO music director/conductor Toshi Shimada at https://ectsymphony.com

For more information: (860) 443-2876, https://ectsymphony.com