Jon Armstrong - Voluntary Breath (2026) [Hi-Res]

The composer of "Voluntary Breath," a work for soloist and orchestra, built it originally on an image from his own dream: a shamanic figure in lotus position floats over a mountain lake, strumming a guitar-like instrument, and every note sends ripples across the water, while retuning the instrument changes the patterns and frequencies.

The meaning of this image was transformed in January 2021, when the composer and his wife Erin had a son, Breen, born at 23 weeks and 6 days, weighing about 1 lb 4.8 oz (roughly 580 g). The boy spent almost nine months in the neonatal intensive care unit, suspended between life and death; today he is healthy. The NICU soundscape, made up entirely of alarms and the hum of machines, terrified his parents, since premature infants are extremely sensitive to stimulation. His father tried to "tune" the room by humming simple melodies and drones in the key and tempo of the machines. For the first four months Breen was on a ventilator and was "breathing over the vent," unable to match its imposed rhythm, and his parents did not know whether he would ever learn to breathe on his own. This made the composer newly aware of his own breathing and helped him understand why it is the cornerstone of so many spiritual practices (he quotes Thich Nhat Hanh).

The work has three sections. The first, melodic and fluid, represents the love and prayer surrounding the child. The second, angular and rhythmic, is inspired by medical language, science, and machinery. In the third, the two merge: songs of healing are set to the rhythms of ventilators and the cadence of medical jargon. The central idea is that the child survived thanks to both love and prayer and the skill of doctors and technology, and everything needed to sound "in time and in tune."

There are six main themes. "Resonance": three cadenzas gradually build out the main melody hidden in the orchestra, which the soloist discovers and plays in full only at the very end. "Strands of Golden Light": one night by the isolette, the exhausted father glimpsed, in his peripheral vision, golden strands enveloping his son (an embodiment of the countless prayers from many traditions), and heard them as a shimmer of unstable microtones and glissandi over the alarms. "Ripples on a Mountain Lake": the soloist initiates waves that travel through the orchestra and bring everyone into resonance. "Lullaby": melodies incorporating the notes and rhythms of the machines grew into a simple song; when the baby could finally be held, his father felt his own voice vibrating in the fragile body. "Chant": the composer was raised in a Buddhist community with communal chanting in Japanese (fast unison phrases, grinding clusters like a swarm of bees, strikes of a prayer bell), which reminded him of the daily medical rounds, where the bewildered parents listened to incomprehensible medical speech. The ostinato here is built on the rhythm of the phrase "23 weeks, 6 days gestation," the saxophone solo is composed from the text of medical records, and the accompaniment is transcribed from medical machinery. "Nora's Theme": the older daughter could not visit her brother because of COVID restrictions, yet spoke of him as if she knew him; the composer imagined her singing to him a melody to help him find his way home. He heard the second iteration of this theme in full in Glacier National Park, where he had gone to say goodbye to his friend, the bassoonist George Adams, who died there in 2020, and in his memory the theme is introduced by the bassoon.

The work is dedicated to his wife Erin, his children Nora and Breen, everyone who prayed for the boy, and his medical care team. The composer thanks the contributors and the Idaho State University College of Arts and Letters.

Tracklist:
1. Jon Armstrong - Voluntary Breath, I
2. Jon Armstrong - Voluntary Breath, II
3. Jon Armstrong - Voluntary Breath, III