Jason Malli, a long time resident of Chester, Connecticut, has composed music for over 30 years and publishes works through Junderground Compositions. He has studied composition with Jane Brockman and Hale Smith at the University of Connecticut and Geoffrey Gibbs at the University of Rhode Island and received his BA in Humanties from Albertus Magnus College and MALS from Wesleyan University exploring digital media and documentary film as vehicles for electroacoustic works. Considering the internet as a virtual audience, Jason created “wirelessness?” and “Through the Cracks,” two interactive multimedia compositions using Flash, a commonly used program that integrates video and animation into web pages. The development of these pieces, while intriguing enough discovering the lenses by which music can be constructed with tools usually associated with business applications, also proliferated new methods for aleatoric music and indeterminacy. As a saxophonist, Jason has worked toward merging the spiritual and spontaneous sensibilities of free improvisation with strictly composed components. “Saxophone Symphoscapes in Twelve Parts,” a work-in-progress, culminates escapades of musical meditations within the non-linear environment of Final Cut, a digital video editor. Preconceived melodies were performed and extended in varying acoustical spaces on soprano, alto, and tenor saxophones and re-composed simultaneously with videos clips that captured resulting improvisations creating layers of sounds and images. In another current work, “Hither Bells Toll,” Jason again combined electroacoustic music with images and video. For this five part tone poem, he deconstructed found bell sounds utilizing the modular audio processor, AudioMulch. Most of the bell sounds recorded for this work were truly struck, but in “Bells of Freedom I,” one can hear the iconic school bell’s digital sine wave transformed into a microtonal cantus firmus. Continuing a life long passion for folkloric and early music instrumentation, Jason composes short works for fifes, mandolins, and recorders rediscovering ancient forms in new contexts. In February 2009, he programmed a concert of contemporary works for the fife. This recital showcased the fife in a variety of contexts and a sampling of Jason’s original tunes from his three books. Each project evolving over the past three years was chronicled through digital video and continue to be compiled into a autobiographical documentary, “By A Route Obscure” which had its premiere screening at Wesleyan in April 2009.
