Kevin Maloney

Kevin Maloney

Prof

 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0871-7957

Personal profile

Biography

Kevin Malone was born in New York and read mathematics and computer science at university before changing to a music degree programme.

Between the awards of BMus in Analysis from the New England Conservatory in Boston and MMus in Composition from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for composition and saxophone studies at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique de Paris.

He returned to England where he earned a PhD in Composition from Goldsmiths' College University of London. The most influential composition teachers throughout early academia were William Bolcom, Morton Feldman and Leslie Bassett.  He was Music Director of the Brecht Company in America in the 1980s during which time he also developed skills for composing for film.  He was also Music Director of the new music ensemble Cambridge Circus in the 1990s.  

Malone lives in Manchester and regularly engages with public and social concerns through music-making and radio discussion.

Research interests

The work of Kevin Malone spans genres and media beyond any conventional labelling.  He is equally at home with electronics, multimedia and harpsichords to choirs and orchestras, embracing a postmodernist and poststylist approach across his work over the past decade.  Performances and broadcasts in Europe, North America and Australia have attracted enthusiastic -- and sometimes bewildered -- comments from the press.
 
Over the last 18 years, his compositions have focused on global events and issues with a particular awareness of the roles of performers and the audience in public arenas, the sound of the spoken voice and its use in broadcast media, interdisciplinary work including film soundtracks and installations, and comedic timing.  He has composed the music for two feature films -- To Kill a Killer and Lockout and created the music and sound design for The Assembly, a half-hour film commissioned by the 2007 Manchester International Festival.
 
His most recent orchestra works have focused on the events of 9/11: the two concertos Vox humana, vox populi (bassoon, tenor saxophone or cello solo with medium orchestra) and Eighteen Minutes (two double bass soloists with string orchestra); and the two tone-poems E pluribus unum (cello solo with medium orchestra) and Angels and Fireflies (flute or recorder solo with string orchestra). Two further works based on the events of 11 Sept 2001 include the choral song Gently Tread composed for the fifth anniversary ceremony at the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93, and Requiem77 for tenor saxophone or cello with air traffic controllers recordings.
 
Preferring to communicate to audiences with both familiar and unusual sounds, Malone's postmodern style is readily heard in the extensive 52-minute string quartet Opus opera commissioned by Arts Council England which presents the full dramatic territory of an opera through four string players.  Equally eclectic works include Count Me In for piano and tape (artists' selection in the British Contemporary Piano Competition 2006), Buffalo for wind band, American Terpsichore for piano quartet which wickedly melds popular dance styles with academic musicianship training, and A Clockwork Operetta, a commission which sets discarded pop lyrics from Burgess' screenplay of A Clockwork Orange.
 
Many of these works have been presented in major events such as "Eagles, Angels and Fireflies: A Transatlantic Commemoration of the Tenth Anniversary of 9/11" webcast between the Imperial War Museum North (UK) and Wake Forest University (USA) on 11 Sept 2011, and "40 Minute Warning" which marked the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 through a multimedia performance at a British nuclear bunker site.

Further information

Commercial recordings

  • A Clockwork Operetta (solo CD, Metier)
  • The Music of 9/11, Vol.1 (solo CD, Metier)
  • Opus opera and other string quartets (solo CD, Prima facie)
  • Chorus: Testimonies in voice-sculptures (solo CD, ASC Classical Series)
  • Sudden Memorials (Coviello)
  • The Water Protectors, The Housatonic near Sandy Hook, When the World's on Fire (Metier)
  • The People Protesting Drum Out Bigly Covfefe (Coviello)
  • Zuzu's Petals (Divine Art)
  • Noise Reduction (Harwood)
  • Saturday Soundtrack (Forsyth)
  • Four Pieces for Cello (Centaur)
  • Fast Forward (ASC Classical Series)
  • The Last Memory (ASC Classical Series)
  • Eighteen Minutes (Campion)
  • Aims, Goals, Targets and Objectives (Campion)

Contact details

Email [email protected] (compositional) or [email protected] (university)

Teaching

Current/recent teaching

Undergraduate

  • Composition
  • Film Music Composition and Sound Design
  • Chamber Music
  • Sonic Invention
  • Dissertation

Postgraduate

  • MusM: Composition, Special Topic, Dissertation
  • PhD: Composition, Dissertation 

Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

  • SDG 13 - Climate Action

External positions

Member, Editorial Board "Ukrainian Musicology", Tchaikovsky Ukrainian National Academy of Music

1 May 2017 → …

Vice-Chair, Greater Manchester Humanists

1 Aug 2015 → 1 Mar 2020

Trustee, Piccadilly Symphony Orchestra

1 Jun 2015 → …

Areas of expertise

  • M Music
  • autoethnography
  • community music
  • social music-making
  • political music
  • musical theatre
  • Electroacoustic Music Composition
  • film music composition

Research Beacons, Institutes and Platforms

  • Digital Futures
  • Creative Manchester

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