Imperfect Intervals (for solo piano)

For Piano Solo, or any other instrument or instruments.

Purchase the score and recordings here.

Available in two versions:
1. Text score for any instrumentation
2. Nine traditionally notated piano solo movements

Imperfect Intervals came together accidentally. This music did not start on the page, but rather as sounds. I recorded nine pieces as improvisations in October and November of 2020, and labeled the files "Sound Diary" on my hard drive. When I was making them, that's all they were: daily diary entries, documenting a period in my life of deep reflection.

But with each new recording, I started to notice an emergent improvisational process. It seemed like the improvisations were being guided by a logic. That logic had musical implications, to be sure -- there an abundance of fifths and fourths in these pieces, the so-called "perfect" intervals. But those intervals are mediated by all sorts of other intervals, some small and some as vast as the whole piano. And the sonority of my piano, which was beginning to drift out of tune while I was making these recordings, certainly made these intervals seem "imperfect" to my ears.

Moreover, the process that was unfolding wasn't really about musical intervals. I began to realize that it was more about a manner of approaching the instrument. It was a mindset, a headspace. Gradually, I began to realize that the notes were the least consequential aspect of the music. The notes could have been anything, as long as they were infused with the energy that I was bringing to the piano. That energy behind the music was the music.

The text of the score is the closest representation to this energy behind the music. If anyone, on any instrument, wants to play Imperfect Intervals, they can use that text as their score. Certainly, when I do an Imperfect Intervals improvisation, the approach laid out in this text is my guiding force.

Nevertheless, I've decided to reproduce transcriptions of my nine Imperfect Intervals recordings. These transcriptions are pieces all on their own. But they also provide a clue for how the diffuse process of improvising through this particular lens might manifest. Of course, the possibilities are limitless.

From Darkness We Awaken (for violin, violoncello, alto saxophone, prepared piano, vibraphone, and percussion)

Commissioned by Virago

For violin, violoncello, alto saxophone, prepared piano, vibraphone, and percussion

Score and Recordings will be available late 2021/early 2022.

I composed From Darkness We Awaken in the middle of what has proved to be the most chaotic period of time that I've ever lived through. As I write these words we are in the midst of a global pandemic that has killed millions, a fascist is attempting to consolidate power in the United States, mass protests are erupting across the country to affirm that Black Lives Matter, and a mounting climate crisis is threatening to destroy us all.

Against the backdrop of these intersecting crises, another personal upheaval occurred for me: in March 2020, my wife and I found out we were expecting our first child. Now, in October, we're less than two months away from our baby's arrival.

Of course, we couldn't be more excited. But while 2020 continues down its intensely toxic path, in our house it's been eerily quiet. We've essentially been in quarantine since March, rarely venturing out, terrified of what a Covid-19 infection could do for our growing baby. We've thrown our pent up energy into preparing our home, our hearts, and our lives for the arrival of a new human. It's a strange juxtaposition, to be simultaneously balancing so much joy with so much fear.

The one thing that has kept me relatively grounded in this unique moment has been writing this piece. I've worked quicker than usual, immersed myself in it, and put my whole self into it. As I progressed deeper into the piece, I observed it taking on more and more of a central role in my well being. I started to notice myself using this piece as a forum for processing these transformative changes. From Darkness We Awaken became a proxy for my emotional preparations for the next phase of my life — a diary documenting my personal metamorphosis. It became an avatar for an awakening of sorts: for myself, for our future baby, and hopefully for our society.

From Darkness We Awaken works to bring together several concerns that have been central to my creative practice for years — namely, the tension between composed and improvised music, and a desire to blur the lines between these two dispositions. This piece started as a series of vignettes for solo prepared piano that were structured improvisations. When I decided to transition it into a chamber piece, one of the chief concerns was to retain the open, improvisational quality of the original while utilizing the wider coloristic palate made available by the introduction of new instruments.

I'm grateful to BethAnne Kunert, Sofia Carbonara, Wesley Hornpetrie, and Meghan Rohrer of Virago for commissioning this work. Their collaborative and open attitude has given me permission to completely be myself, without a second thought.

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

Published as part of the Dualisms collection (below.) We Shake With Joy starts on page 14.
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 2, We Shake With Joy, is an exuberant and joyful dance. Employing techniques such as hand claps and other percussive effects, both players are almost constantly playing as the music becomes increasingly ecstatic. The result is a trance-like groove that persists onward throughout the entire piece, morphing subtly as the tonality shifts incrementally. My hope was to capture a feeling of a cup overflowing; of abundance; of pure and real joy.

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.