Kali Malone Presents Burning Song

In recent years, the pipe organ—what once seemed like a fixture of sacred music spaces, mostly forfeited by young composers—has enjoyed an astounding resurrection. From Ellen Arkbro and Sarah Davachi to Fujita and Hampus Lindwall, an international confederation of composers have reminded us what Charlemagne Palestine has long said about the organ: It is the world’s greatest synthesizer. Foremost among this wave is Kali Malone, a Colorado native who hopped trains and played folk banjo before getting her G.E.D., decamping to Bard, and stumbling into a series of scenarios that eventually found her in Europe, crawling through the innards of these massive instruments with organ tuners. Even as she composed for choirs, electronics, and brass, the organ became her hallmark, with epics like her sublime The Sacrificial Code and the radiant Does Spring Hide Its Joy surrounding listeners in slow-motion passages of weight, feeling, and unexpected and uncanny harmony.

On Burning Song, released in October 2026, Malone returns to the collaborators with whom she made Spring—Sunn O))) guitarist (and husband) Stephen O’Malley and astounding cellist Lucy Railton. But Malone foregoes the sprawling architecture and system of Spring for Burning Song, the steady motion of slow chords suggesting a tide going in and coming out over an extended period of time, as though gravity were loosening its grip on the world ever so slightly. The first half of Burning Song stems from the 2023 Venice Music Biennale, while Malone composed the rest just before the sessions in the Leipzig church where Bach is buried. These pieces flirt with hypnotic stillness (“Bells on a Branch”) and tender raging (“Sounding A Void”) before landing on one of the most achingly beautiful pieces Malone has ever written, closer “My Eve My Dawn.” It conjures the horizon, lighting up with wonder, sumptuous with possibility. Malone leads O’Malley and Railton through Burning World (and more) at Big Ears 2027.