Five Card Draw (for one or more players)

Published as a part of the Dualisms collection (below.) Five Card Draw begins on page 5.
Recording available here. Purchase the score here, or the whole collection here.

Five Card Draw, for one or more players
Video features Thom Monks (percussion) and Michael Malis (piano)

Premiered at Strange Beautiful Music XII, September 2019.

Five Card Draw uses a deck of playing cards as its score. The players work their way through the deck, alternating between fixed and improvisational roles.

I’ve used playing cards often to generate pre-compositional material for various compositions of mine, drawing rhythms, pitches, and form from their numerical and spiritual properties. But Five Card Draw is the first time that I've used cards as the score itself. Often, standard musical notation can act as a buffer between performers and the music they create. But by distancing musical notation from the performance of the piece, Five Card Draw forces the performers to more directly embody the musical processes at play. In this way, Five Card Draw puts forth a basic premise: that a musical composition can be made with anything; even a deck of cards, found in a kitchen drawer.

Rather than outlining specific notes and rhythms, the instructions for Five Card Draw outline a procedure which musicians should follow. These instructions lay out the rules for how the piece works, but leave the interpretation of those rules up to the performing musicians. The rules can be adapted and modified to fit the ensemble, which may be different from performance to performance.

The deck of cards are separated into two stacks: number cards and face cards. Rhythms are derived from number cards according to the process laid out in the score, and players of pitched instruments have the option of using those rhythms in conjunction with predetermined pitch sets.

The face cards are used to divine improvisational inspiration, using the cards' tarot analogues as creative sparks. The players work through the deck, alternating between fixed and improvisational roles.

Quiet Times (for violin and viola)

Purchase the score here.

Since shelter-in-place orders went our across the United States in March 2020, our lives have been altered dramatically. Many of us have mourned. Others are navigating a lack of access to basic resources. Many more are facing significant financial hardship, and all of us have had our day to day schedules thrown into upheaval.

Since this paradigm shift began, I've been taking solace in quiet. Quiet has been a comfort to me -- its uncertainty and potentiality seems so much more honest than many of the noises that tend to express themselves the loudest.

As its name implies, Quiet Times is a quiet piece. It's private music, written for an era in which we've all been asked to retreat into our homes. My goal was to tailor this piece to the scale of a small room. Some of the notes might only be audible to the performers. I hope it inspires others to slow down and find peace in the quiet that we're experiencing as part of our new normal. Perhaps, if and when life returns to what we used to consider normal, we can remember our current quiet and bring some of it with us.

A Little To The Side (for alto saxophone, piano, and drum set)

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

Commissioned by ThreeForm. Premiered on January 21, 2020 at North Carolina School of the Arts.

"There’s a real advantage in deeply investigating and becoming skilled at something and then realizing your real interests are a little to the side of that."

- Kate Soper

Over the last few years, I -- like so many others I know -- have made some significant shifts in my creative practice. As I grow older, I've occasionally entertained the self effacing thought that perhaps these shifts betray some sort of character flaw; a flakiness or inability to stay grounded in one creative process. So when I read the above quote from composer Kate Soper in Sound American Magazine, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I felt like she was speaking to what I've sometimes perceived as my isolation; to my unease about not being squarely situated in one creative practice or another. And much to my surprise, when I shared this quote on Instagram, I found myself flooded with responses from friends, all of whom also felt a deep resonance with this sentiment.

As much as I try to be in complete control of my life, I find that there's always something imprecise about the end result. I need to remind myself that this imprecision is actually something worth celebrating, not deriding. Plans and designs can go out the window as life takes on its own form.

That was the case with A Little To The Side: I started this piece with a very limited set of musical materials, with the intention of carrying those materials throughout the piece. By and large, that happened -- but there are plenty of moments where the music veers off into unscripted territory, taking on a life of its own. In my music, I'm always wrestling with the tension between what should be pre-meditated and what should be left up to inspiration. (This, incidentally, is not too far from the tension between what must be composed and what must be improvised.) A Little To The Side has a little bit of it all.

Ultimately, the experiment of A Little To The Side was, can I write something that sounds like jazz but requires the approach of chamber music? It's a question that obsesses me, and represents something fundamental to who I am as a musician. I'm grateful for the opportunity to explore this creative terrain, and I'm grateful to ThreeForm for asking me to explore with them.

And I'm holding Kate Soper's quote as an affirmation to myself; that it's not only permissible, but actually adventageous to chase my creativity down whatever foxhole it wants to lead me. The path will be longer, but the journey will be mine alone.

Five Stations (for piano, tenor saxophone, and string quartet)

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

For Piano, Tenor Saxophone, and String Quartet

Premiered by Balance, May 31 2019
presented by Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings
Michael Malis — piano
Marcus Elliot — tenor saxophone
Kimberly Kennedy — Violin
Jiamin Wang — Violin
James VanValkenburg — Viola
Jeremy Crosmer — Cello

Performed at the Lakes Area Music Festival
Gichi-ziibi Center for the Arts
April 14, 2024

Becca Tank - Saxophone
Mikael Darmanie - Piano
Ben Odhner - violin
Sabrina Bradford - violin
Grace Takeda - viola
Scott Lykins - cello

Curated by Loki Karuna

Program Notes:

Recently in my life, I've made a series of very intense transitions in a relatively short period of time. As my habits have changed, so have my priorities. And as I continue to grow as a person, I realize that this process of constantly being in flux is nothing to be scared of; rather, the act of perpetually inventing and reinventing oneself is something to bravely welcome with open arms.

Upon refection, I've realized that the rhythm of these transitions is such that one extended period of time that feels whole, full, and universal cedes to another extended period of time that feels altogether different but no less whole, full, or universal. I've begun to think of these contrasting extended periods as "stations" -- resting points, places of reprieve, and the defining textures of my daily life. I've sought to transliterate this idea to a musical process in this composition.

This piece consists of five distinct "stations" -- extended sections have their own defining life-forces independent of each other. These stations share certain characteristics in terms of materials -- pitch sets, interval structures, and rhythmic orientations -- but much of that similarity is buried beneath the surface. These five stations are meant to contrast with each other, showcasing extended musical ideas that should feel whole and full in their own right.

I hope this piece inspires performers and audiences to reflect on the stations that their own lives have traversed through, as well as the stations of life yet to come.

-Michael Malis, May Day 2019

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.