Molly Joyce is a composer and performer whose work explores disability as a creative source. Described by The Washington Post as “one of the most versatile, prolific, and intriguing composers working under the vast new-music dome,” her music has also been praised by The New York Times for its “serene power” and by Vulture as “unwavering…enveloping.” Joyce frequently performs on an electric vintage toy organ—an instrument she found on eBay that physically suits her body and conceptually embodies her engagement with disability in sound.

In 2025, Joyce released her most recent album, State Change, via Better Company Records (North America) and FatCat Records’ 130701 imprint (rest of world). Drawing on surgical records as musical lyrics, the album employs adaptive music technologies including MUGIC, motion capture, Bela, and the KAiKU glove. State Change was praised by The Wall Street Journal for its “enormous expressive range” and was long-listed for NPR’s Best New Albums.

Her 2022 album, Perspective (New Amsterdam Records), features the voices and viewpoints of disabled interviewees. Pitchfork called it “a powerful work of love and empathy,” while The Wire described it as “a powerful ongoing project…charged by an intense composer/performer relationship.” The project has since expanded into six iterations, including installations, performances, and a public art exhibition with Kunstkommission Düsseldorf.

Film scoring projects include the original score for the Emmy Award–winning documentary Patrice: The Movie, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival before streaming on Hulu.

As a curator, Joyce works across disciplines ranging from museum exhibitions to concert performance. She is co-curator of In Feeling: Empathy and Tension through Disability, an exhibition featuring nine living disabled artists across dance, sound, visual art, and more. The exhibition opened at the University of Virginia’s Fralin Museum of Art in Fall 2025 and will tour venues across the United States. Additional curatorial projects include collaborations with Metropolis Ensemble and NIAD (Nurturing Independence Through Artistic Development).

Her music has been commissioned and presented by institutions including Carnegie Hall, the Invictus Games (Düsseldorf), SXSW EDU, TEDxMidAtlantic, the Tang Teaching Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Bang on a Can Marathon, Danspace Project, National Sawdust, and Americans for the Arts. Her work has been featured in Pitchfork, Red Bull Radio, eBay, WNYC’s New Sounds, and I Care If You Listen.

Joyce’s orchestral and ensemble works have been performed by the Minnesota, New World, Vermont, Pittsburgh, Albany, and Milwaukee Symphony Orchestras; Chicago Sinfonietta; Gränslandet Symfonisk Fest (Sweden); and youth ensembles including Carnegie Hall’s NYO2 Orchestra, the New York Youth Symphony, and the Harvard Glee Club.

Earlier and parallel releases include Breaking and Entering (2020, New Amsterdam Records), featuring toy organ, voice, and electronics and described by New Sounds as “a powerful response to something…still too often stigmatized, but that Joyce has used as a creative prompt,” as well as her 2017 EP Lean Back and Release, featuring violinists Monica Germino and Adrianna Mateo and praised by Paste Magazine as “energetic, heady, and blisteringly emotive.” Joyce’s work also appears on more than a dozen commercial albums, including collaborations with Vicky Chow, Nick Photinos, Bec Plexus, NakedEye Ensemble, Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble, Alistair Sung, Ralph Sorrentino, and others.

As a collaborator, Joyce has worked with media artist Andy Slater; visual artists Lex Brown, Alteronce Gumby, Leo Castaneda, Maya Smira, and Julianne Swartz; choreographers Melissa Barak, Kelsey Connolly, Carlye Eckert; and writers Marco Grosse, Christopher Oscar Peña, and Jacqueline Suskin. Notable collaborative works include Left and Right, an interdisciplinary performance with choreographer and dancer Jerron Herman, writer and audio describer Max Greyson, and director Austin Regan that examines historical myths surrounding the left versus right side. The work has been presented by UCLA Center for the Art of Performance, deSingel, and National Sawdust.

Joyce is the recipient of ASCAP’s Leo Kaplan Award, grants from New Music USA, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Jerome Fund, as well as support from state and regional arts agencies. Her residencies include AIR Krems, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Grace Farms, Headlands Center for the Arts, Embassy of Foreign Artists, and The Watermill Center.

She holds degrees from The Juilliard School (with scholastic distinction), the Royal Conservatory in The Hague (as a Frank Huntington Beebe Fund Fellow), and Yale School of Music, and earned an Advanced Certificate and MA in Disability Studies from CUNY. Joyce has taught at NYU, Wagner College, and Berklee Online, leading courses in Disability and the Arts, Music Technology, Music Theory, and Orchestration. She is currently a Dean’s Doctoral Fellow at the University of Virginia, pursuing a doctorate in Composition and Computer Technologies. Many of her projects are represented by INTERIM, a boutique management consortium led by Candace Feldman.