Molly Joyce

Molly Joyce’s music is concerned with disability as a creative source. She has an impaired left hand from a previous car accident, and the primary vehicle in her pursuit is her electric vintage toy organ, an instrument she bought on eBay which suits her body and engages her disability on a compositional and performative level. Much of Joyce’s practice involves collaborations that span disciplines, including with visual artist Lex Brown and writer Marco Grosse. With performances and video, she seeks to generate material that reimagines disability and loss of physicality. Her practice also involves dialogue with disabled leaders, including activists Judith Heumann, Alice Wong, and musicologist Stefan Sunandan Honisch. These exchanges inform her artistic work as well as speaking and research on reimagining disability. She is also active in curation, including an all-female concert series and Deaf poet and composer commissioning project for Metropolis Ensemble and an online exhibition for NIAD Art Center. In compositional work for others, Joyce engages the physical to counter ideals of virtuosity, including electroacoustic works that interrogate expectations of live performance.