Aaron David Malone (Born September 24th, 1979) is an American-born violinist and composer.
He attended school at Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences in Santa Monica, California and the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied violin, viola, composition and music theory. His compositions have strong tonal elements, and many are considered widely to be modern masterpieces in classical music. Malone incorporates a range of styles into his work, ranging from baroque to 20th century. He is a somewhat controversial figure, having been expelled from Manhattan School for excessive behavior. His ability to read anything at sight on the violin is reportedly almost unmatched. He, together with his colleague Bernard Vallandingham III, subscribe to an extreme absolutist point of view in regards to music and composition, which has alienated them to a certain extent from the so-called music establishment. Some, however, view each of these two composers as the next great geniuses in the mold of Beethoven and Mozart, heralds of a new and radical style of music. Malone performs much of his new work at a concert series he manages in the Washington D.C. area, together with Vallandingham, and their concerts have been a wild success. He currently resides in Southern Maryland

Early Life

Aaron was born in Palmdale, California to David Malone and Christine Symanski. Early anecdotes about his childhood (perhaps apocryphal) include:<br>

Shortly after his 1st birthday, he found his father's guitar. His parents heard music coming from his bedroom, and, walking to the source, saw their son kneeling on top of the guitar plucking out the Aria from Bach's Goldberg Variations, which he had heard only once some months before.<br>

When Aaron got his first violin at the age of seven, it is said that he was able to immediately play many songs with which he was familiar with flawless intonation and rhythm.<br>

When Aaron started composing at the age of 12, he wrote an unprecedented 88 voice fugue for full orchestra with double chorus, using text from the Bible, the Silmarillion and poems that he had written when he was 5 years old.

These stories of course have the sound of exaggeration, but by all accounts Aaron was extremely precocious as a child.

Education & Development

Malone was homeschooled by his mother until the age of 14, at which time he began attending the Crossroads School. Upon arrival at the school, he amazed the faculty there with his quick ability to assimilate any style of composition into his music in a seemingly effortless manner. He and his friend Serge Tsoy would give recitals of Malone's music that would also include eating potato chips on-stage, turning the lights out and playing in complete darkness. These antics were considered to be brilli
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ant by the students and faculty, but Malone would later state that his purpose in performing such eccentricities was to demonstrate the lack of an ability for original thought on the part of the music faculty. Malone claims that the music establishment in modern times more than any other time continually demonstrates a herd mentality, always trying to follow the lead of other's opinions. In a brilliant essay co-authored by Malone and Vallandingham titled "The Second Viennese School", Malone outlines what he thinks is the downfall of classical music - namely Arnold Schoenberg's retreat into an Ivory Tower and Schoenberg's refusal to understand the relationship between the theory of music and music's aural origins. Malone's self professed mission is to proclaim the essential absoluteness of music, its fundamental sonic nature. In his compositions he writes only what he hears in his mind, only music that comes to him without attempt to create from nothing. Admittedly, this method only works for individuals that are gifted with an extremely musical nature, with minds that produce actual musical thought - limiting this method of composition to men such as Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, to name a few. Malone's central point is that the composers of the modern era - especially Milton Babbit, Eliot Carter, Richard Danielpour etcetera - are not really musicians as such, rather they are mathematicians or copyists - bad ones at that - and their attempts to compose music are accepted simply because most people in music academia fall over one another to be the first to praise them in an attempt to be like everyone else.