Kali Malone
All Life Long
IDEOLOGIC ORGAN
Kali Malone’s superpower is that she can make everything sound like winter. Perhaps it’s the inherent traits of the organ, her childhood in Colorado, her current home of Sweden, or something far more mystical, but putting on one of her albums immediately conjures images of fireplaces, cocoa (and whiskey, if you’re over 21; we will be checking IDs in this fantasy), and snow-covered ground. I don’t listen to much experimental classical music, but one of my favorite things about the genre is all the information that must be conveyed from artist to listener to gather the full intended experience.
For instance, All Life Long was written for pipe organ, choir, and brass quintet by Malone, from 2020 to 2023. The choral music was performed by Macadam Ensemble and conducted by Etienne Ferschaud at Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-L’Immaculée-Conception in Nantes, and you can almost hear that French church built in 1470 in these recordings—voices linger and echo off the surfaces, creating an almost cavernous reverberation that works its way into the very structure of these compositions.
The music for brass quintet was performed by Anima Brass at The Bunker Studio in New York, and the organ music was performed by Malone and her husband Stephen O’Malley “on the historical meantone tempered pipe organs” between Église Saint-François in Lausanne, Orgelpark in Amsterdam, and Malmö Konstmuseum in Sweden.” I don’t know the significance of those particular organs, but let me tell you something, pal, they sound really freaking swell.
The most interesting part of All Life Long is how Malone arranges the different aspects of the project. There aren’t a ton of shared traits between brass ensembles, choirs, and solo organ performances, but transitions from song to song are seamless. There’s something about Malone’s compositional style that makes these dirge-like songs meld fluidly into a cohesive body of work, but one that’s still able to be picked apart and rearranged by listeners who gravitate toward one style or another. My personal favorites are the brass compositions, though I could listen to Malone on the organ all day as well. The choral performances are a bit too…choral for me (could “Gregorian” be the right word?), but that is absolutely a character flaw on my end.
Another character flaw on my end is that I need to be in a particular mood to listen to this music. Though many of the compositions are minimal in nature, this is not a passive listening experience. All Life Long is a challenge, a demand for engagement; it’s work that you love doing, but it’s still work. If winter lasted forever, things would get pretty glum. But a perfect bluebird day when the air is so cold it feels like a slap in the face? That’s sort of how All Life Long hits.
