Kali Malone recorded her forthcoming album Burning Song during two late-night sessions at Leipzig’s Thomaskirche, the church where Johann Sebastian Bach served as cantor.
Malone became the first musician to perform contemporary works on the church’s Bach Organ, an instrument completed in 2000 and designed around historical Baroque tuning principles. Engineer Francesco Donadello placed more than twenty microphones around the church for the recordings. Lucy Railton adds cello, while Stephen O’Malley plays bowed acoustic guitar. The album is due on 30 October 2026.
The microphone count interests me because an organ already turns architecture into part of the instrument.
Its pipes fill the building with sound, but the room determines how those sounds return to the listener.
One microphone gives you one relationship with that space.
Twenty microphones create many.
Close.
Distant.
Direct.
Reflected.
The recording process therefore becomes partly a decision about which version of the church should survive on the album.
You cannot record architecture completely.
You can only choose where to listen from.
