Unstoppable: How Rising Music Star Molly Joyce Has Transformed Her Disability Into A Creative Source
“I don’t view it as a limitation, I view it as freedom. My limitation has opened a unique way of being and living in the world, and I cannot imagine life without it.”
Yitzi Weiner, Authority Magazine
October 2020
Fifteen Questions Interview with Molly Joyce
“I’m particularly interested in breaking down socially-constructed notions of what human ability is and can be.”
15 Questions
August 2020
Weekend Roundup: 7 Things to Do This Weekend
“In a 2017 TEDx Talk, Joyce described how composing on this instrument allowed for a creative process that could move beyond the binary of ability and disability. Proof of her breakthrough is abundant throughout ‘Breaking and Entering; the musician’s debut full-length solo album…All those affections can be heard on the album’s opening track, ‘Body and Being,’ in which sustained chords, MIDI tones and her dream-pop vocals work together to produce an airy, liberating sensation.”
Seth Colter Walls, New York Times
July 2020
“Unable to pursue the studied perfection of routine technique, Joyce has discovered the means to meet her own expressive needs, transforming involuntary constraints into a liberating condition…on Breaking and Entering Joyce is not simply performing music; she is making art that is irreducibly her own.”
Julian Cowley, The Wire
August 2020
Video Premiere: Bec Plexus & Molly Joyce, “Think Out Loud”
“The ninth installation of Bec Plexus’ video release spree is Molly Joyce’s ‘think out loud,’ a vivid piece that advocates for a positive mindset. Joyce’s music often explores reverberant electronics, stemming from her instrument of choice — the vintage toy organ. Here, those interests shine through, as rich drones and warm textures color the music with a radiant warmth. Plexus’ voice intersperses between the luscious backdrop; the music is enveloping and entrancing.”
Vanessa Ague, The Road to Sound
July 2020
“hear new music by Molly Joyce for vintage Magnus electric toy organ from her record, Breaking and Entering“
John Schaefer, New Sounds
July 2020
“Unwavering. The standard repertoire for voice, electronics, and vintage toy organ consists almost entirely of music by Molly Joyce. After injuring her left hand, Joyce found ways to adapt to her disability, which has become an organizing principle for her enveloping soundscapes. National Sawdust, always a home for such sensitive sound sculptors, presents a live all-Joyce online program.”
Justin Davidson, Vulture
July 2020
“There’s also work by Pittsburgh-bred Molly Joyce featuring voice, toy organ, electronics, from her recent record, Breaking and Entering, where she harnesses the capability of a vintage Magnus electric toy organ. She finds that the toy organ’s unique design of chord buttons on the left and keyboard on the right is ‘made for her body, made for her form, made for her deform.; Joyce was involved in a car accident at the age of seven that impaired her left hand.”
John Schaefer, New Sounds
July 2020
Best Of 2020 (So Far): 3. Molly Joyce – Breaking And Entering
Jeremy Shatan, An Earful
July 2020
“Composer-performer Molly Joyce celebrates the recent arrival of her newest infectious release on the New Amsterdam label, Breaking and Entering, with an online release party, featuring performance and conversation.”
Steve Smith, A few short notes from the end run…
June 2020
“I can’t say enough about how great this is and will leave you with one caveat: prepare to be obsessed.”
Jeremy Shatan, An Earful
June 2020
A Thoughtfully Enveloping Debut Album From Innovative Composer/Organist Molly Joyce
“At low volume, this is soothing, enveloping music: played louder, its edges reveal themselves.”
delarue, New York Music Daily
June 2020
Molly Joyce finds endless exploration on Breaking and Entering
“The music she creates on Breaking and Entering is lush, combining the twinkling sound of the vintage toy organ with the echoing reverb of electronics. Her voice is another mechanism within the fold, pulsating as harmonies grow and change. The result is mesmerizing, music that envelops you with its vibrancy.”
Vanessa Ague, The Road to Sound
June 2020
“But far more present was the collective’s progeny: the milky repetitive vibraphone of Molly Joyce’s ‘Purity’”
Zachary Woolfe, New York Times
May 2020
“virtuoso solos…from percussionist David Cossin, who brought hallucinatory beauty to another premiere, Molly Joyce’s Purity.”
Richard Fairman, Financial Times
May 2020
“Listen to how four composers adapted their visions to a singer’s avant-electronica production style.”
Seth Colter Walls, New York Times
April 2020
April 2020
“It’s a powerful response to something (namely, physical disability of any kind) that is still too often stigmatized, but that Joyce has used as a creative prompt.”
New Sounds, Weekly Music Roundup
April 2020
Video Premiere: Molly Joyce Performs Form and Flee
I Care If You Listen
April 2020
“The tone’s deliberate, Joyce here wishing to draw attention to ongoing erosion within Badlands National Park; the musical design’s as deliberate, the composer structuring the piece to emphasize transitions that see geologic formations eroding before one’s ears.”
Textura
April 2020
John Schaeffer, WNYC’s New Sounds
March 2020
Molly Joyce: Strength in Vulnerability
Frank J. Oteri, NewMusicBox
February 2020
“…it was the contemporary works that seemed to thrive most in this setting…Molly Joyce’s ethereal ‘Light and Dark,’ for flute and percussion.”
Jeremy Eichler, The Boston Globe
December 2019
Music Video – Secret Love [Campfire Poetry Project]
An Original Dance Performance based on a poem by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
Performed by Kingsley Ibeneche
Directed by Katie Sadler
Cinematography by Carissa Henderson
Original Music by Molly Joyce
Voiceover by Carol Hendrickson
Produced by Max Rothman, Du’Bois A’Keen, and J.Y. Chun
ThrdCoast
November 2019
“Herman, who bills himself as ‘an interdisciplinary artist, primarily working in dance,’ is a snazzy performer with hemiplegic cerebral palsy which has caused him to devise ways to work balance and propulsion differently. His energy in the space is wrenching, surprising and always thrilling. Composer/musician Joyce, disabled in an accident, often moves with Herman, sings high and sweet, and plays a vintage toy piano set up in the middle distance between far-off Taylor and the audience. Their textures are so different, they make me think of their performance space as a painting canvas generous enough to make room, at once, for the roughest impasto and a silky brush.”
Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody
November 2019
“…while Molly Joyce’s close-up video of hands in motion is keyed to singing inspired by a Nico recording.”
Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post
November 2019
“In the short film ‘Body and Being,’ Herman walks pensively among fallen leaves before sending his torso into lush spirals against Joyce’s celestial music. The two have reunited to create ‘Breaking and Entering,’ a live performance that challenges narratives of disabilities. Presented by Danspace Project, the work draws from the experiences of these two artists — Herman with cerebral palsy, and Joyce with an impaired hand resulting from a car accident — which they use for creative stimulant, as embodied in Herman’s fluid physicality and Joyce’s stirring soundscapes.”
Brian Schaefer, New York Times
November 2019
“These two artists treat disability as creative opportunity. In ‘Breaking and Entering,’ they explore their struggles and their transformations together—Joyce with ethereal vocals and an electric toy organ, Herman with his body in motion. Each performance is followed by a dance party.”
Brian Seibert, The New Yorker
November 2019
“Joyce’s ethereal vocals, vintage toy organ, and electronic soundscapes created an exquisite expansiveness.”
Alyssa Kayser-Hirsh, I Care If You Listen
June 2019
Molly Joyce on the influence of disability studies on her music-making
Colin Hambrook, Disability Arts Online
June 2019
CKIA FM Radio Urbaine
May 2019
Peak Time: Sarah Kirkland Snider — includes broadcast of Molly Joyce’s Lean Back and Release
Red Bull Radio
March 2019
“The four songs of Molly Joyce are the only ones that truly form a unity, a cycle. ‘Conform’, ‘Deform’, ‘Reform’ and ‘Transform’ all have a relationship with Joyce’s personal tragedy: she still experiences the physical consequences of a car accident. An event that turns things upside down and makes you think about who you are and how you relate to your environment.”
Ben Taffijn, Nieuwe Noten
March 2019
“Downtown, the dynamic and fertile Metropolis Ensemble hosted ‘Soloicity,’ one performance event of a four-part series curated by contemporary composer/performer Molly Joyce…completely inviting–refreshingly relaxing, and eclectic.”
Xenia Hanusiak, Operawire
March 2019
“Joyce inhabited similar territory, relating sonic immobility to certain constraints of physical disability. She sang thin, keening vocal lines over static, nasal synth clusters, most of them confined to a stratospheric ringing, with occasional low notes providing the moody, effective harmonic shifts.”
Brin Solomon, National Sawdust Log
February 2019
“For this concert, SFCMP included Molly Joyce’s Blue Swell, for solo violin and prerecorded material. Played with rapturous intensity by Hrabba Atladottir, Blue Swell is positively oceanic in its depth and surges, with the violin gradually overcome by the recording.”
Lisa Hirsch, San Francisco Classical Voice
January 2019
“Joyce deployed a pleasing variety of inventive sounds in the orchestra—for example, opening the score with glints of bowed vibraphone, piano strings hammered by mallets, and violin harmonics…her vocal characterization was strong, giving each singer ample ways to distinguish his or her role.”
Charles T. Downey, Washington Classical Review
January 2019
Empowering Female Contemporary Composers
WHRB 95.3FM, Harvard College
December 2018
“[Melissa Barak] opened the program with her latest piece, ‘Cypher,’ an intriguing exploration of classical movement to an exotic recorded score by Molly Joyce. Using pulsing rhythms, Joyce combined piano, glockenspiel, cymbals and kick drum, to which Barak devised urgent and crisp movements, often contrasting thrusting legs with flowing and sculpted upper bodies.”
Laura Bleiberg, Los Angeles Times
July 2018
“During Monday’s 20-minute set, the addition of Ms. Joyce’s vocals made me eager to hear a full song cycle of similar material. Another hint of this performance style’s serene power can be heard on an excerpt, posted on Soundcloud, from her collaboration with the percussionist Jop Schellekens.”
Seth Colter Walls, New York Times
June 2018
“Molly Joyce fused vintage organ with DJ samples and melancholic, psychedelic vocals to create the ideal soundtrack for a road trip night shift.”
Lana Norris, I Care If You Listen
June 2018
Molly Joyce: Beyond Ability – Reimagining Normative Bodies in Music
21CM.org
April 2018
“Head to Toe by Molly Joyce is a short, playful piece that combines bright, ringing mallet-driven pitches from a glockenspiel with five specifically pitched desk bells. It glistened in the church’s acoustically bright auditorium.”
Jim Farber, San Francisco Classical Voice
January 2018
“…Molly Joyce’s sparky Push and Pull. In an upbeat manner, Joyce plays with the idea of the musical downbeat — pushing and pulling the pulse. It was a burst of poster-paint bright optimism, with sassy saxophone and horn solos. I liked it a lot.”
Rebecca Franks, The Times of London
January 2018
Best Of 2017: Classical – Chamber Explorations
“Molly Joyce – Lean Back And Release: This EP got a lot of people excited earlier this year and rightly so. Joyce shows a versatile and confident touch on these two pieces for solo violin and prerecorded electronics, each one developing from minimal material into something deep and involving. The performances by Adrianna Mateo and Monica Germino are highly persuasive and I suspect we will be hearing much more from Molly Joyce in the future.”
AnEarful
December 2017
Video Premiere: Form and Deform Molly Joyce (Four/Ten Media)
I Care If You Listen
December 2017
“Also memorable are Joyce’s ‘Sit and Dance,’ which darkens its classical baroque sonorities with the cellist’s intense wail and the subterranean rumble of electronic pulsations…”
Textura
October 2017
“The standout works on Artéfacts contain ties to history and stories, compositions based upon retold accounts…Molly Joyce’s ‘Sit and Dance’ builds layers of cello melodies atop of a ground bass (a perpetually repeating bass line) taken from the 17th century. The recontextualization of the ground bass amidst the modern lines make it all the more haunting, almost like a ghost murmuring from the Baroque era.”
Andy Jurik, PopMatters
September 2017
New Releases, August 2017: includes Molly Joyce’s Sit and Dance, performed by Nick Photinos
John Schaeffer, WNYC’s New Sounds
August 2017
WFMU: Miniature Minotaurs with Kurt Gottschalk: Playlist from August 17, 2017
Includes Molly Joyce’s “Sit and Dance,” from Nick Photinos’s album Petits Artéfacts
WFMU
August 2017
Interview: Molly Joyce On Releasing a Debut EP
“Few other emerging composers embody the spirit of blooming creativity so well as Molly Joyce. Talented and exacting, open-minded and committed to her craft, Joyce is laying the foundation for a supremely interesting career.”
21CM.org
July 2017
Season Two, Episode Seven – Composer, Molly Joyce
1 Track Podcast
June 2017
Live Photos: Celebrating Composer Molly Joyce’s Album Release in New York
“Energetic, heady and blisteringly emotive, the tracks skitter and sway through bold violin arrangements with electronic flourishes.”
Paste Magazine
March 2017
“Molly Joyce‘s 11 minute Rave begins deceptively antithetical to the title’s implications, but builds into first real peak experience of Aorta. This moment captures Chow’s breathless virtuosity complimented by a fascinating use of real-time overdub to insinuate (impossibly) many instances of this performer all at once simultaneously playing the gamut of the instrument, completing as though by metamorphosis, through its use of pedal tones, a transformation into a piano/organ hybrid.”
I Care If You Listen
February 2017
“intense, acerbic…all the more impressive considering that this is Joyce’s debut release.”
New York Music Daily
February 2017
“arresting…multiple listens are needed to absorb and appreciate everything.”
Textura
February 2017
Video Premiere: Early Audition – Molly Joyce, Shapeshifter
The Log Journal
February 2017
Molly Joyce “Lean Back and Release” Interview
WKCR-FM, Columbia University
February 2017
“…makes me very excited for Joyce’s future output…this EP was great”
Zak Hait
January 2017
“…intoxicating, deepening experience. I am blown away by this compelling occurrence.”
Das Klienicum
January 2017
Interview: Indie-Classical Composer Molly Joyce Explores Hidden Collaborations
“With ‘Lean Back and Release,’ Joyce’s music will likely receive even more acclaim.”
Michael Hamad, Hartford Courant
January 2017
Classical Instruments, Contemporary Sounds: includes Molly Joyce’s Rave, performed by Vicky Chow
John Schaeffer, WNYC’s New Sounds
December 2016
“…Molly Joyce’s run-for-your-life ‘Rave’…”
Richard Gehr, Village Voice
December 2016
Featured track – “Another winner is Molly Joyce’s ‘Rave.’ The work starts out sounding anything but exultant, sporting motifs that seem emotionally mismatched. (In the score, Joyce’s description of a tempo as “controlled but on the edge” seems appropriate.) As the composition develops, Joyce’s lines achieve an odd syncopation, and ultimately a sense of balance strong enough to suggest a club-influenced feel.”
Seth Colter Walls, Pitchfork
November 2016
“Joyce’s Rave begins on a similarly atmospheric note, but proceeds to lead the ear on a tumultuous sonic journey; the artfully developed electronic component rewards, and slowly ravishes, the attentive listener.”
Patrick Castillo, Q2 Music
November 2016
Video Premiere: Head to Toe (Molly Joyce) performed by Mike Truesdell
I Care If You Listen
October 2016
“Molly Joyce’s ‘This River’ had a refreshing touch of Broadway that was accentuated by the performance”
Joseph Dalton, Albany Times Union
June 2016
“Particular kudos go to the cellist Rachel Young, who played in all five pieces, including a solo turn in “Sit and Dance, for Baroque Cello and Electronics,” an impassioned…piece by Molly Joyce.”
Anne Midgette, The Washington Post
April 2016
“[Fresh is] done with good technique and pleasant ideas, especially a rhythmic violin ostinato.”
Pablo Bardin, Buenos Aires Herald
July 2015
“Ms. Joyce’s ‘Fresh,’ commissioned as part of the Youth Symphony’s valuable First Music Program for young composers, made an impression too.
About nine minutes long, it opens with a snare drumroll that gives way to a pulsating dance rhythm at disco tempo. That rhythm slowly and stealthily infects the orchestra, thumping away in high strings at the end.
‘Fresh’ teems and boils, its textures grimy in the low strings and brass at one moment, glinting the next.”
David Allen, the New York Times
May 2015
The Rest Is Noise: Mid-May Miscellany
“…VisionIntoArt’s Ferus Festival (May 29-30, NYC) features this year the likes of Agata Zubel, Hafez Modirzadeh, Molly Joyce, and Cornelius Dufallo…. “
Alex Ross
May 2015
“In Lean Back and Release, Molly Joyce combined live acoustic violin with distorted violin loops to superb effect.”
Chris Woolfrey, The Wire
April 2015
“Built of musical and sonic juxtapositions and contrasts, [Molly Joyce’s Luminescence] offered a musical contemplation of craving, or reaching for, light.”
Elaine Schmidt, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
March 2015
“Ms. Joyce’s ‘Immovability’ takes its cue from dance music, and the tension between moving and being still. The percussionist begins as a steady force, a low heartbeat, as a solemn theme passes around the ensemble…”
Zachary Woolfe, the New York Times
April 2014
“The concert closed with Molly Joyce’s Immovability. With a single muted drum, Joyce deftly established an enticing pulse. In elegantly controlled fits and starts, the instrumental texture increased and subsided on a subtle wire of tension, with bright lines of incipient melody pushing up from beneath. On equal measures of hope and hesitation, the music reached, yearning, toward the light—a fitting close to a fascinating concert.”
Susan Scheid, Prufrock’s Dilemma
April 2014
The Juilliard School Student Spotlight: Molly Joyce
December 2013
“Molly Joyce’s ‘Dollhouse,’ an imaginative piece built of percolating rhythms and musical drama. It moved smoothly from sections of broad, urgent statements to passages reminiscent of a child’s music box, using rhythmic motion and some deft musical interjections to move forward.”
Elaine Schmidt, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
November 2013
“…beautiful and virtuosic violin/organ duo by Juilliard’s own Molly Joyce.”
WQXR’s Q2 The Brothers Balliett – Back to School
September 2013
Preview for Fekta’s April 2013 show at Spectrum: “Molly Joyce, the enterprising 21-year-old Juilliard composer….”
Gabriel Furtado, Feast of Music
April 2013
Artist Spotlight on Molly Joyce
Sabrina Pena Young, New Music Resource
March 2013
“‘Glow’ by Molly Joyce, had a wonderful sound thanks to her electric chord organ, and her obvious skill at playing it along with the composition of her piece. Sublime in its simplicity with a vast appeal that made me wish her set was longer than three minutes (same amount of time for all the performances). She was really great.”
Kerwin Williams, Studio-Phoenix Blogspot
December 2012
I Care If You Listen (.com) Fall 2012 Mixtape – includes Molly Joyce’s Rain In My Head, performed by harpist Emily Hoile
September 2012
Feature post on Molly Joyce:
“Joyce writes vibrant, inventive music that communicates straight from the heart.”
Susan Scheid, Prufrock’s Dilemma
September 2012
“The most ornate work on the bill, Molly Joyce’s Vintage balanced dancing contrapuntal harmonies within a vividly tense, pensive framework, carried to more towering heights with poise and assurance.”
Alan Young, Lucid Culture
August 2012
“The composer of Medium Piano, the incredibly promising Molly Joyce, is a twenty year old Julliard student as of this writing. In 2010 she received the ASCAP Morton Gould Award. The piece on this disc is one of three preludes: Medium Piano, Fast Piano and Slow Piano, commissioned for the 2011 San Angelo Texas Piano Festival. Having studied with Richard Danielpour and Christopher Rouse, she writes in an emotionally appealing twenty-first century style. We can hope to hear more great music from her for many years to come.”
Maria Nockin, Fanfare Magazine
July/August 2012
“A prodigious, 20-year old talent from Pittsburgh who now attends Juilliard, Joyce’s sound evokes a maturity suggestive of a musician and storyteller much older and more experienced…As a young composer, Joyce already understands the importance of both form and content, and this will serve her well in what looks to be a very promising career.”
Erin E. McGuff, Woman Around Town
May 2012
“Among the eight muses, few are big-name stars, except possibly Amy Beach and Libby Larsen, but what a panoply of creative women artists from different generations, ranging from 19th century composers (Marion Bauer and Amy Beach) to Molly Joyce, barely 20 years old! Each brings her own interesting, sensitive and well-mastered world.”
Éric Champagne, La Scena Musicale
May 2012
“Molly Joyce’s sustained mood-painting in Medium Piano, a work that might be described as Berg and Debussy’s love-child.”
Jed Distler, Gramophone
June 2012
“The strings lift the ensemble to harrowing heights….the music subtly changes as a long-lined lyricism threads its way through the tumult.”
Susan Scheid, Prufrock’s Dilemma
March 2012
“There is a very attractive sound at work here; a sort of impressionism-meets-jazz quality.”
Daniel Coombs, Audiophile Audition
February 2012
“Molly Joyce’s dreaming 2010 Medium Piano.”
Anthony Burton, BBC Music Magazine
November 2011
“Medium Piano (2010) by Molly Joyce is the first of three preludes based on different speeds (the others are Fast Piano and Slow Piano) and the pianistic possibilities inherent in each. A little jazzy, it is reminiscent of Copland’s Four Piano Blues; its delicate filigree and sparse texture evoke Satie. It is a remarkably well-crafted piece, especially for one written by an eighteen-year-old. I look forward to hearing more works by this up and coming composer (a Pittsburgh native now studying at Juilliard with Christopher Rouse).”
Nanette Kaplan Solomon, Journal for the International Alliance for Women in Music
November 2011
“Violist Katherine Hagen made Molly Joyce’s prize-winning “Dear Elizabeth Hayes,” for solo viola, sound like Bach on a good day, or maybe the young composer (age 19) is a genius. Time will tell, but Joyce is certainly able to reveal all of the best qualities of the instrument.”
Christopher Hyde, The Portland Press Herald
August 2011
“Highlights of the evening included a beautiful viola piece by 19 year old composer Molly Joyce…”
Jakob Battick, Dispatch Magazine
August 2011