Baker Artist Portfolios

"My practice centers internal life. I work in immersive audio (Dolby Atmos), music production, and narrative sound design to evoke autobiographical memory. The sounds that inform each nanosecond of our experiences often disappear as our lives change. Through immersive and spatial audio, voice, instruments, and everyday sound, I design multimodal listening experiences that invite a return to forgotten moments, approaching memory as something that requires care in order for us to grow." - Carolyn Malachi 

BIO

Carolyn Malachi is a GRAMMY-nominated sound artist and immersive audio producer whose practice has evolved from composition and performance into interdisciplinary explorations of how listening functions across art and science. Drawing on her foundations as a composer and performer, she works with immersive audio, spatial design, and narrative sound to examine how sound shapes identity, embodiment, and care.

Malachi’s projects span music, film, digital platforms, and research-driven listening activations. Emerging from lived experience and everyday soundscapes, her work uses voice and environment to develop compositions and physically immersive soundscapes that explore diasporic memory, motherhood, and rest as creative pillars. Writing functions throughout her multimedia practice as generative material, another opportunity for experimentation and systems calibration.

She is the creator of Lullabies for the Diaspora, an immersive project investigating sonic care and autobiographical memory, and the sound designer for When You Hit Me, a child-advocacy platform that translates developmental science into sensory experience. Based in Baltimore, her practice also extends into civic listening initiatives such as CLLCTIVLY’s Power of One campaign.

SELECTED WORKS

“Distinguishing between immersive audio and spatial audio clarifies how I work and why these formats matter. Immersive audio places the listener at the center of a physical sound field, using multi-speaker arrays to surround the body with sound from multiple directions, including above and below. In my practice, I use Dolby Atmos to map voices, instruments, and sonic artifacts throughout this environment, creating enveloping physical experiences. Spatial audio, or binaural audio, translates this experience into a headphone-based format, conforming immersive listening from the institutionalized physical to the accessible digital.” - Carolyn 

Lullabies for the Diaspora (2024–Present)
Immersive composition & guided listening series
A spatial-audio project exploring motherhood, rest, and diasporic memory, built from lullabies, domestic recordings, and autobiographical sound. Presented through intimate listening activations.

When You Hit Me (2024–Present)
Immersive sound design
A 3-D medical and child-advocacy platform using spatial sound to render the unseen interior world of a child’s body, integrating neuroscience, storytelling, and advocacy.

HORMONES FOR BREAKFAST (Short Film, 2025)
Score Contributor + Re-recording Mixer

Byline: In the midst of IVF treatment, a happy couple's morning ritual triggers an emotional rollercoaster as they strie to do the one thing that will bring them closer.
Official Selections: Black Film Festival of New Orleans, the Micheaux Film Festival, Urban Mediamakers Film Festival

KULTUR (Short Film, 2024)
Composer & Sound Artist
Original score and sound design interrogating identity formation, surveillance, and digital ethics in Black childhood.
Official Selection: San Francisco Black Film Festival
Finalist: Essence Film Festival

Whispers Among Ruins (2024)
Sound Designer, Producer, Supporting Vocalist
GRAMMY Award Nomination - Best Spoken Word Poetry Album 

One Town at a Time (2023)
Documentary sound design & score
A sonic portrait of community, power, and local political change.

Counter Narratives (2022)
Music, oral history, book chapter
A multimodal response to COVID-era media narratives around labor, productivity, and visibility in creative work.

PERFORMANCES & LISTENING ACTIVATIONS

2026

Power of One (28 Days of Black Futures) - Baltimore, MD

2025
ALX Jazz Festival — Alexandria, VA
Montgomery College World Arts Festival — Rockville, MD

2024
Smithsonian National Museum of African Art — Washington, DC
Exploring Immersive Audio Series, DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities

2023
WHUT-TV / PBS — Regional

2022
Publick Playhouse — Cheverly, MD

2021
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts — Washington, DC

2020
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum — Boston, MA

Remote Controlled (Recording Academy) - Los Angeles, CA

2019
Hard Rock Cafe — Johannesburg, South Africa
Staples Center — Los Angeles, CA

2018
St. Lucia Jazz Festival — St. Lucia

2017
Armed Forces Entertainment Tour — UAE, Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait
Women’s March — Washington, DC

2016
American Music Abroad Tours — Barbados, St. Lucia, Grenada, Haiti
Hangout Hangover — Tokyo, Japan

2015
American Arts Envoy Tour — China, Taiwan, Papua New Guinea

FORTHCOMING

The Dr. Maya Angelou Experience (Spring 2027)
Lullabies for the Diaspora (Expanded presentations, April 2026)

HONORS

National Film Festival Selections (2025)
Baltimore BASE Grant (2023)
Honorary Doctorate, Shepherd University (2015)
GRAMMY Award Nomination (2011, 2024)