Balance
““among the most compelling Detroit jazz musicians of their generation.””
Marcus Elliot - saxophones Michael Malis - piano
Balance is a collaborative duo between saxophonist Marcus Elliot and pianist Michael Malis. Called “among the most compelling Detroit jazz musicians of their generation,” Elliot and Malis’ “intuitive improvisations” stand on the threshold of composed and improvised music. Their 2022 sophomore album, Conjure, was called “one of the best contemporary jazz records to come out of Detroit in quite some time” (Hour Detroit Magazine.) In 2017, they released their eponymous debut record, which was praised by the Detroit Metro Times as “contemporary jazz of the highest order, a benchmark for where the genre can go.”
As a duo, they have performed at some of Detroit’s most stalwart cultural institutions, including the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Detroit Public Library. They were named Artist-in-Residence at the Chamber Music Society of Detroit for their 2017-2018 season. They have mounted major projects, including 2019’s I Got to Keep Moving, a collaborative performance piece with Guggenheim-award winning author Bill Harris and master drummer Gerald Cleaver.
As individuals, they are bandleaders who have released critically acclaimed albums, composers who have had their music performed around the world, and sidemen who have performed with a wide variety of jazz luminaries, including Marcus Belgrave, Jimmy Cobb, Karriem Riggins, Mulgrew Miller, Robert Hurst, Talib Kweli, Tyshawn Sorey, William Hooker, and many others. They have performed around the world, both as leaders and as sidemen, at venues such as Birdland, The Kennedy Center, The Stone, The Yokohama Jazz Promenade, and The Detroit Jazz Festival.
Press Quotes
February 2023: “Personal, intimate, and expansive all at the same time.”
December 2022: “(Malis and Elliot) are so good together, so finely tuned to each other's harmonic movements, melodic motifs, and internal rhythms that the songs sound fully realized even with the limited instrumentation.”
November 2017: “A classical sensibility subtly informs the interplay between Malis' delicate piano and Elliot's lush saxophones; these songs are contemporary jazz of the highest order, a benchmark for where the genre can go and how much is still, and always, imaginable.”
January 2016: “Two of Detroit’s most important young jazz musicians.”
April 2019: “What was most striking about the synergy between Harris and the band was the sheer beauty of the music: the stark contrast between the grim realities of Harris's story and the band's melodic core, located in Elliot's exultant phrases and Malis's evocative runs, was stirring. And much of the music's strength was found in the spirit of resilience and defiance that permeates Harris's text.”