Two Devotions — in memoriam Mary Oliver I: We Shake With Grief (for baritone saxophone and piano)

Published as part of the Dualisms collection (below.) We Shake With Grief starts on page 11.
Recording available here. Purchase the score here, or the whole collection here.

Two Devotions — in memoriam Mary Oliver
For baritone saxophone and piano
Video features Kaleigh Wilder (baritone saxophone) and Michael Malis (piano)

Premiered at Strange Beautiful Music XII, September 2019.

We shake with joy
We shake with grief
What a time these two have, housed as they are in the same body

-Mary Oliver

\When I read this beautiful poem in the summer of 2019, it immediately arrested my attention. I was drawn to its inherent contradiction — the idea that we can be simultaneously full of joy and full of grief. Furthermore, the poem seems to assert that that contradiction is not only possible, but necessary: that living this contradiction is an integral component of the human experience. With Two Devotions, I sought to write a piece that captured these two opposing dispositions.

Movement I, We Shake With Grief, is slow, somber, and aching. It features the piano and baritone saxophone in duet, with the pianist alternating between playing the keys of the piano and plucking the strings of the piano. This section culminates in a pizzicato improvisation from the pianist while the saxophonist repeats a simple figure.

The pianist then places a chain, bells, and other metallic objects on the low strings of the piano. My goal with this section was to capture the inarticulate wail that often feels like the summation of grief. Grief is messy. Grief isn’t rational. Grief can be all-consuming. In this sense, this section was intended to be unformed, misshapen, and full of anxiety. The piece ends with the pianist whistling into the soundboard of the piano; a question without any answers.

Three Pieces for Piano (for solo piano)

Three Pieces for Piano by Michael Malis, released 17 March 2020 1. 31114 2. 72114 3. What Story Down There Awaits Its End? I wrote these pieces in 2014, which in retrospect feels like a different lifetime.

Purchase the score here.

Purchase the recordings here or on Bandcamp.

“This is thrilling music, with shifting harmonic and rhythmic qualities that require prodigious precise technique and the kind of generic versatility that few pianists achieve. … This is a wonderful milestone in the artistic progress of an artist of boundless versatility and intellectual curiosity secured in an expressiveness anchored in solid artistic discipline.”

- Southeast Michigan Jazz Association

I wrote these pieces in 2014, which in retrospect feels like a different lifetime. I've almost released this collection several times, but inevitably some other, more pressing project has gotten in the way, and as a result this music has languished for six years.

I'm choosing to release this music now because I feel that making art is more important now than ever. We live in strange times, where mandated social distancing is our only hope at defeating a pandemic which could cause irreparable harm. In this moment that we can't be together physically, life can feel creatively stifling. We have to do what we can to continue to cultivate our sense of community.

Any music for solo piano has an undertone of isolation. Both pianists and composers are, by nature, accustomed to social distancing. There is a sense of distance embodied in this music -- distance in time since it was recorded, distance in space between myself and the microphones that were far at the back of the cathedral we recorded in, and distance between you and I as I release this music out into the ether. That distance does create isolation, certainly. But there is a beauty in that distance, too.

Head and Heart (for cello quartet)

Purchase the score here, and the score and parts here.

For Cello Quartet
November, 2018
Duration: ~9 minutes

Commissioned by the Detroit Composer’s Project.
Premiered at the Third Place Concert Series in Ann Arbor, MI on December 16, 2018.

Premiered by the Hole in the Floor Quartet:
Kellen Degnan -- cello
Wesley Hornpetrie -- cello
Ben Rodgers -- cello
Hanna Rumora -- cello

In early September of this year, I discovered a cassette tape that I made, dated July 7, 2016 -- my birthday. I immediately put it in my tape player. Upon listening, I was struck by the recording. The recording, which was me improvising solo piano with electronics, lacked many things: high fidelity, musical structure, a sense of articulation. But the recording more than made up for that lacking in one crucial area: heart. I heard an arresting vitality; the potent and powerful electricity which we musicians constantly grasp for.

In the pursuit of more abstract and advanced musical concepts, it's easy to let this unquantifiable realm of musicianship -- musical heart -- go unattended. Head and Heart works to locate that sensibility at the center of its universe. This piece honors the part of myself that is my least articulate self, the self that I don't have words to describe, the self that I can't justify or defend or reason with, the self that I've run away from or tried to grow out of. In creating Head and Heart, I transcribed one section of that cassette tape recording and used those musical materials as a basis for the whole piece. That material finds a literal statement in the opening theme of the piece, and recurs throughout.

But I also applied analytical processes to extend that material -- using my head to extend the reach of my heart. After all, the initial recording that inspired this piece doesn’t exactly hold up; it’s messy, wild, and formless. Head and Heart uses that exciting kernel of energy as a starting point, but moves that energy into distant and far flung directions completely beyond the reach of the original material. The result is a synthesis of the two approaches; where the heart fails the head picks up, and where the head sputters the heart interjects.

I hope that this piece inspires a sense of true vulnerability; a graceful acceptance of those moments when our hearts can lead us to our authentic, inarticulate, honest selves. Additionally, I hope that it models a measured and thoughtful approach to living; an approach where we buttress our emotional cores with contentiousness and care. In this sense, head and heart can be are complimentary, interdependent, and mutually supportive.

Coda (for piano and cello)

Purchase the score here.

for piano and cello
May 2018
Duration: ~6 minutes

I wrote this piece in a hurry, in the two weeks after I finished my master's program and its premiere. Although that's an uncharacteristically fast turnaround for me, the expedience of the project was incredibly rewarding. Even more rewarding was having it premiered by a world class cellist, Wei Yu.

I named this piece "Coda" because it seemed to be something of a post-script on my graduate school experience; a reflection on things I had learned, ways in which I had grown, mistakes I had made, and victories I had won.

Premiered on May 18, 2018 at Hunt Street Station (Detroit).

This recording is from this piece’s second performance: at New Music Detroit’s annual “Strange Beautiful Music” festival in 2018. Featuring cellist Wesley Hornpetrie.

Wise Ones (for fourteen players)

For fourteen players
November 2016, Revised November 2020
Duration: ~7 minutes

Purchase the score here, and the score and parts here.

At the time I was writing this piece, I was spending a lot of time with Ornette Coleman’s Peace, Arthur Russell’s Tower of Meaning, Gil Evans’ arrangements on the Miles Davis album Birth of the Cool, and Wayne Shorter’s Alegría. The instrumentation is:

Flute
English Horn
Clarinet in Bb
Bassoon
Horn in F
Flugelhorn
Trombone
Vibraphone, Suspended Cymbal (one player)
Bass Drum, Glockenspiel (one player)
Violin
Viola
Cello
Bass

This piece has never been performed, and I would absolutely love to have someone play it one day. If you’d like to play it, please contact me.