“I was right in front of these huge glass windows,” says the musician, who plays a six-stringed electric cello. He had just talked to some patients about “what they were going through and how much the music meant to them,” he says, “and I just felt like I was channeling that whole kind of feeling and experience.”

The artist — full name William Wytold Lebing — also conducts weeklong workshops through a recreational arts program administered by the USO Warrior and Family Center for military members receiving medical treatment at Walter Reed. Playing for wounded veterans and their families for two years revealed a world Wytold didn’t know much about — it bridges a gap between the generally progressive arts community and more conservative military types, he says — but it’s also changed the way he composes music.

Wytold’s most recent album, Fireflies, Fairies & Squids, reflects his artistic shift. On this record, he says, “You can slow down and take everything in, and I think that mindset and my decision to put out that kind of gentler music was shaped by all of these experiences at Walter Reed.”

The song “Let the Light In” stemmed from that day in the America building. It represents a change for a musician who calls his earlier work “progressive classical” with live looping. Today his compositions are quiet and otherworldly — a departure from the classical/hip-hop fusion on his album Biggie, Beethoven, Busta, and Bach, not to mention his performances alongside the National Symphony Orchestra and superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

In the workshops, musicians, poets and visual artists offer veterans hands-on opportunities for creative expression. For Wytold, that might mean an introduction to playing the ukulele, or a workshop he calls “music theory demystified.” Some workshop participants have gone on to show their visual art or perform the guitar or cello they’ve learned.

“When you see people who aren’t talking to anyone and are shifty-eyed and jittery, and by the end of the week, they’ve come around to singing an original song, it’s such a rich, powerful experience,” Wytold says.

For some former soldiers, making art provides unexpected inner peace. According to Wytold, some have told him, “this is the first beauty I’ve found in the world since I deployed.”

Wytold performs an album-release show Dec. 17 at The GallÆrie pop-up gallery in Mount Pleasant. It will include an exhibition by self-taught mixed-media artist Joe Merrit, a Marine Corps veteran whose work came out of workshops at Walter Reed.

The two D.C. artists, who have played together since 2014, recently debuted their first collaborative album, Gut+Voltage: Viola da Gamba and Electronics in Synthesis. The hybrid acoustic/electronic effort brings the viola da gamba out of the Renaissance and Baroque eras, thanks to Domingues, an established cellist who received a Master’s in viola da gamba performance from Baltimore’s Peabody Institute.

Via email, Domingues writes that the viola da gamba, which boasts frets and more strings than a cello, “has a similar range but an incredible resonance.”

Resonance is the driving force behind Gut+Voltage, which Domingues recorded with Kane, a multi-instrumentalist and audio engineer who also plays in Soccer Team and Red Spells Red. Kane imbues Domingues’ elegant viola da gamba lines with layers of loops and echoes. The resulting sound is vast, but melodious and welcoming.

Domingues traces her fascination with the viola da gamba to the 1991 French historical drama, Tous les Matins du Monde.

“It was a film starring Gérard Depardieu as the 17th century French composer/viol player Marin Marais and his volatile relationship with his teacher and the idea of music as either worldly or for oneself,” Domingues writes. “The film featured some of the most beautiful music written for the viola da gamba, performed by Jordi Savall. It made a huge impression on me.”

Domingues and Kane set out to make an improvised record, which meant they had to become closely attuned to each other’s musical instincts. “I like to record everything and fish for the best bits and the happy accidents,” Kane emails.

“The writing was very organic — face to face, in the same room.”

The two musicians met through Kane’s former gig as a sound tech at D.C. venue Black Cat. Domingues, who is classically trained, has served as a go-to cellist in the local indie-rock scene since the ‘90s. She’s played with Fugazi, Dead Meadow and Mary Timony — among others — and led her own band, Garland of Hours.

But Gut+Voltage offered Domingues a chance to expand her repertoire.

“After spending about 20 years playing cello in bands,” Domingues writes, “I wanted to try something different.”

Domingues and Kane perform May 13 at noon at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in downtown D.C.