December 2, 2024: Spence mentioned in The New Yorker by Alex Ross
"The vocal and brass arrangements on “All Life Long” are so immaculately crafted that one could see the pieces becoming repertory items for progressive-minded groups. For the moment, however, Malone doesn’t wish to make the music available outside the format she has devised for it. She rehearses painstakingly with her collaborators to find the right balance of cool precision and expressive warmth. The ensemble at Tully included the vocalists Matthew Robbins, Sam Strickland, Zach Ritter, and Brian Mummert; the trumpeters Luke Spence and Atse Theodros; the horn player Austin Sposato; and the trombonists Nikki Abissi and Jennifer Hinkle, the last accompanied by her impressively serene medical-alert dog, Kita. The trumpeter and composer Sam Nester conducted for most of the evening, until Malone herself took over."
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"The cumulative power of the event at Tully justified Malone’s wariness about letting her creations out of her grasp. The vocal settings came first, then a suite of pieces for brass. Finally, Malone and O’Malley entered to play the organ, sitting side by side at the manuals. The brass, positioned in near-darkness, augmented the textures in the closing sections. In “No Sun to Burn,” the penultimate work, rays of hope seemed to break through, as the brass dwelled on the notes E-flat, F, and G, summoning an ecstatic haze of overtones. In “The Unification of Inner & Outer Life,” a dissonant fog descended again, with E-naturals grinding quietly against F’s. Yet there was an Arctic calm in that gray, distant sound—no place of comfort, to be sure, but a protected space nonetheless."
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