The Hoh Rainforest, on the Olympic Peninsula, was unlike anything Hiroshi Yoshimura had seen before. Ancient spruce and hemlock trees stretched hundreds of feet high, casting off strands of lichen from their branches like flowing locks of hair. Fuzzy moss flocked nearly every inch of the trees’ trunks, costuming them as fantastical creatures that could come to life at any moment. “It felt as though I had stepped inside a stage set,” Yoshimura said of his surroundings. More than the incredible sights, what surprised him most about his visit to the Washington state national park was that little noise penetrated from beyond the verdant canopies. When the rainfall ceased and the fauna that called Hoh home stood still, barely a sound could be heard.

For Yoshimura, a student of the avant-garde, quiet presented a challenge: to find music in subatomic movements.…