composing beyond the modern
K E V I N M A L O N E
About...
The work of Kevin Malone spans genres and media beyond any conventional labeling, cultivating an attractive musical surface with sophisticated characterisation and unusual design.
“Eighteen Minutes” draws you in immediately and holds your attention.
It has real energy. The Strad
He is equally at home with live electronics, multimedia, theatre and installations to harpsichords, choirs and orchestras, embracing postmodernist and polystylist approaches. Performances and broadcasts in Europe, North America and Australia, including the ISCM, of numerous commissions have attracted enthusiastic comments from the press.
The audience caught the boundless energy – Tippett meets minimalism –
in Malone's “Suspicious Motives.” The Independent, London
A strong sense of theatricality pervades Malone’s music since he was music director of The Brecht Company in the USA.
A Clockwork Operetta – a cabaret commissioned by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation – sets the discarded pop lyrics from Burgess’ unused film script of A Clockwork Orange, while performers of Opus opera, Count Me In and The Radio Song react to prerecorded music coming from unknown sources. His first major operatic work, Mysterious 44, was premiered at Manchester’s Hallé St Peters by Manchester Opera Project with three productions in the USA and UK in the past three years.
Eclectic, imaginative and carefully constructed lines...refreshingly humorous.
Los Angeles Times
Malone was born in Buffalo, New York and initially read mathematics and computer science at the University of Rochester. He was awarded the BMus from New England Conservatory and the MMus from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), and was a Fulbright Fellow in Paris. He remained in England after a PhD from the University of London, and was Director of Composition at the University of Manchester. His most influential composition teachers were Leslie Bassett, William Bolcom and Morton Feldman.
Shows wit and a rare ability to communicate complicated processes with clarity.
The Independent, London
His music shows an acute awareness of social concerns and global events, such as the choral piece Gently Tread which he conducted in Shanksville, PA at the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 for the televised fifth anniversary memorial ceremony of the events of Sept 11, 2001. Further works about 9/11 include two urban concertos: the highly-personal first concerto Vox humana, vox populi, and the World Trade Center concerto Eighteen Minutes. The rural orchestral tone poems Angels and Fireflies and E pluribus unum capture the melancholy and intimacy of small communities dealing with tragedy.
It is not often that a major concerto is written for the bassoon, and this one is definitely woven into history.
Manchester Evening News
He has composed music for two feature films, To Kill a Killer and Lockout (distributed by Warner Bros), and for the Manchester International Festival 2007 documentary film The Assembly for which he also created the 5.1 sound design. He also creates sound installations for art galleries, museums and cathedrals.
Testimonies of one-time members of congregation mutate between choral music and catchy commercial jingles.
“Chorus” is a far cry from the inane soundclash often heard in art shows.
Manchester Evening News
Television discussions, radio interviews and public talks about his work affirm Malone's beliefs about social music-making and community outreach as a means of keeping humanity at the centre of art, and art at the centre of society.
