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At the time, Malone was studying sustainable agriculture and experimenting with barter systems \u2014 \u201cI thought I was going to become a farmer\u201d \u2014 but a chance meeting scuttled those plans. Visiting New York City to secure a fake ID in order to catch her bandmate\u2019s solo performance at an over-21 venue, she needed a place to stay. A classmate gave her an address that turned out to be a house show by a free-jazz violinist. \u201cI was 16 or 17 years old, coming in with my backpack, and everyone there\u2019s a cultured 30-year-old,\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n
Malone struck up a conversation with a Swedish woman sporting a buzz cut: Ellen Arkbro, an experimental musician visiting the United States to play South by Southwest. \u201cShe just sort of invited me to come visit her in Stockholm, probably thinking I never would,\u201d Malone said. \u201cBut then I did.\u201d She spent her winter break sleeping on Arkbro\u2019s floor and soaking up the Stockholm experimental scene. Upon returning to Massachusetts, she saved up her money, packed her Fender Blues amp and bought a one-way ticket back to Sweden.<\/p>\n
In 2014, after being accepted to Sweden\u2019s Royal College of Music, she began studying the social, spiritual and emotional effects of historical tuning systems. As part of her research, she contacted a Stockholm organ tuner, Jan B\u00f6rjeson. What was supposed to be a 15-minute chat during B\u00f6rjeson\u2019s coffee break turned into a full day\u2019s immersion in the intricacies of the instrument.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will never forget my first meeting with Kali,\u201d B\u00f6rjeson, who has been tuning and repairing organs for 44 years, said in a video interview. Malone came with her notebook at the ready and a list of relevant, probing questions about esoteric temperaments. Soon, she was apprenticing with him, traveling around Sweden and climbing inside the throbbing behemoths. \u201cYou don\u2019t do that if you\u2019re not crazy,\u201d B\u00f6rjeson said, laughing. \u201cThat\u2019s something quite deep.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the church in Berlin this month, Malone led a visitor behind the mammoth pipe organ and beckoned to a ladder ascending into a darkened crawl space with a note of caution: \u201cI hope you\u2019re not afraid of heights?\u201d With a small, arrow-shaped hammer in hand, she pointed to different mechanisms for fine-tuning the instrument, tiny details to be tapped, twisted or folded. \u201cIf you lose your balance, whatever you do, don\u2019t grab the pipes,\u201d she warned.<\/p>\n
Despite its seemingly traditional underpinnings, \u201cAll Life Long\u201d is Malone\u2019s most ambitious work to date. The organ pieces achieve a new degree of harmonic complexity and emotional resonance, while her canons for brass and voice have the meditative elegance of medieval music.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n