Mal Malone knew she was a musician long before she knew she was a trans woman.
Nearly a decade after picking up the recorder in elementary school, the Mason Gross School of the Arts bass trombone player embraced her full identity as a queer musician last year.
After coming out, Malone felt empowered to take on a new challenge: co-founding Rutgers Rainbow Symphony, the university’s first collective of all queer musicians and allies performing music by queer and other under-represented composers. Their second performance is scheduled for April 13 at Nicholas Music Center.
“This is a piece of the puzzle I’d been missing for a while,” said Malone, 21, now a senior who is graduating in May with a BM in music performance. “I’ve grown into myself more as I’ve taken on this leadership position in Rainbow Symphony.”
Her friend and co-founder, Brian Yumiguano, 22, who has had a front-row seat to Malone’s trajectory at Rutgers as an artist and trans woman, said she’s flourished in the role of musical director and conductor for the new ensemble.
“Before Rainbow Symphony, she was still exploring her gender and everything that comes with that, but in the last year I did see her really delve into being a trans person – especially in our field, where there aren’t a lot of women to begin with, let alone queer people,” said Yumiguano, a junior music education major who plays the French horn and identifies as nonbinary.
The pair first formed a Queer Quintet on a whim in the fall of 2022 around the time Malone came out. The informal collective of five queer brass musicians specifically sought out arrangements by queer composers.
“I’ve been playing band music since middle school, and one of the striking things I notice is that we are just playing music by straight white men,” said Malone. “There’s a lot of established people in the band repertoire, and these are the safe people who get programmed instead of people digging for new options.”
Read more about Malone and Yumiguano at Rutgers Today, and watch a rehearsal that Malone conducted below.
Top image: John Munson/Rutgers University