Kali Malone is an American composer and organist based in Stockholm. Her works implement unique tuning systems in minimalist form for analog and digital synthesis often combined with acoustic instrumentation.
Early life
Malone was raised in Denver, Colorado. She moved to Western Massachusetts to study music, but relocated to Stockholm in 2012 after befriending the Swedish avant-garde composer Ellen Arkbro. She studied electroacoustic composition at the Royal College of Music, Stockholm.
Career
In 2016 she co-founded the record label and concert series XKatedral, together with Maria W Horn, in Stockholm.
In 2019, she released The Sacrificial Code, featuring nearly two hours of pipe organ compositions, through iDEAL Recordings. The album appeared on year-end lists by Pitchfork and The Wire, and was awarded "2019 Album of the Year" by Boomkat.
In 2022, she released Living Torch, a 33-minute piece presented in two movements. It was commissioned by the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) for its loudspeaker orchestra, the Acousmonium. Jettisoning Malone's signature pipe organ, it features a mélange of acoustic and electronic instruments including the trombone and bass clarinet. It was composed by Malone in 11-odd limit just intonation. The trombone and bass clarinet were recorded in meticulous individual parts to match each computer-generated sound wave. It was assembled by Malone with heavily textured drones as well as the boîte à bourdon and sounds generated by the ARP 2500 synthesizer owned by Éliane Radigue. Malone composed and produced the album at the GRM in Paris between 2020 and 2021. It is the first collaboration between the GRM and its new label partner Shelter Press, continuing the Portraits GRM record series founded by Peter Rehberg of Editions MEGO. The album premiered at the GRM in October 2021, three months after Rehberg's death, and was released by Portraits GRM on July 7, 2022.
In 2023, she released Does Spring Hide Its Joy, a collaboration with Sunn O))) guitarist Stephen O'Malley and British cellist Lucy Railton. It was composed and recorded between March and May 2020 in the empty concert halls of Berlin Funkhaus and MONOM during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Malone plays tuned sine wave oscillators on the album, joined by O'Malley's electric guitar and Railton's cello. The album consists of an hour-long composition presented in three versions, each a minor variation on the titular piece. It was released through O'Malley's Ideologic Organ label on January 20, 2023.
On May 14, 2023, deeming Malone's music "profanatory", activists from the French integralist movement Civitas forced the cancellation of one of her and O'Malley's concerts at the Saint-Cornély church in Carnac, Brittany, after the they blocked the entrance of the church.
Personal life
Malone and Sunn O))) guitarist Stephen O'Malley announced jointly on Instagram that they had married on July 29, 2023.