Composed: 2024
Premiered: World Premiere
Duration: 10 minutes

Repetitive Patterns of Inhale and Exhale is a creative exploration of paced breathing – a technique rooted in mindfulness practice used to help reduce stress, panic, and anxiety through activating a parasympathetic response. This technique works by controlling your breathing and following a repetitive pattern of inhale and exhale, which lowers heart rate and blood pressure, and alleviates the physical symptoms of intense emotional states. This orchestral work uses repetitive numerical patterns to create a slow sense of development that gradually unfolds with each cycle, blending pitch and harmony with timbres of white noise to evoke the sound of breath. 

The work has a sense of ebb and flow throughout and each cycle has a distinct feel to it. The first section is a textural exploration of white noise sounds that evoke the sounds of inhalation and exhalation, or like the rise and fall of gentle waves. The second and third sections also incorporate these elements of white noise while blending them with the harmonic and melodic motifs that develop.

One of the concepts Orlando often explores in their work is mental wellness – challenging themselves to push their work into more personal and vulnerable places. “Breath patterns seemed very intuitive to me to explore in music because for me, listening to music is a sort of meditative experience. Writing a piece that encourages being aware of your breath seemed like a natural fit. I also liked the idea of creating an orchestra piece with a very simple and repetitive form, which could open up more potential to focus on exploring other parameters of the piece like orchestration, texture, rhythm.”

Program note by Stephanie Orlando (edited).

This piece was commissioned by Symphony Nova Scotia through the Maria Anna Mozart Award, inspired by Dr Jane Gordon. To learn more, visit symphonynovascotia.ca/award.