Coming Up for Air is an ever-growing collection of over 150 new works, each limited to a single breath: one inhale and exhale. The project started in 2017 as a creative response to my experiences of living with chronic respiratory conditions while forging my career as a professional flutist. My lived experience of this includes feeling confined by my body's limited abilities to sustain one breath for as long as the composer desired - marked with a too-long slur, a too-short rest, or traditions handed down over generations of flute-lore. For example, the expectation of playing the opening solo of Debussy's Prélude à l'Après-midi d'un faune in one breath in an orchestral audition.

For me, my musicality felt stunted, as though each breath I took was filled with anxiety over not being deep or long enough. My environmental sensitivities also meant that common triggers in an audition room (dust, flowers, smoke residue) would set me off and I would be unable to play in the way I had practiced. 

Following a successful surgical operation funded generously by Help Musicians UK, I was able to begin restitching my breathing with my musicality. Instead of moving on by masking my symptoms and getting away with playing the same concertos and excerpts as before, I decided to delve further and explore the question: what if music was one breath long on purpose?