Work #1

Perspective (2020-present) 20’

Perspective is an ongoing project featuring disabled interviewees responding to what access, care, interdependence, and more mean to them. The interviewees’ responses are featured aurally (voices overheard and musical accompaniment) and visually (open-caption videos), representing my initial artistic explorations into access as aesthetic. The work has seen multiple formats, from in-person installation, dance performance, to virtual and interactive talkbacks. The project was released as an album in October 2022 on New Amsterdam Records, praised by Pitchfork as “a powerful work of love and empathy that underscores the poison of ableism in American culture.”

Further information: https://www.mollyjoyce.com/projects/perspective

Selected Excerpt:

Work #2

Two Lives One Body (2024) 8’30’’

for orchestra: 3(+pic).3(+enghrn).3(+bass cl.).3(+contrbass) – 4.3.3.1- timp.3 perc. – strings

commissioned by The Juilliard School

FP: May 22, 2025 by Juilliard Orchestra and conductor Earl Lee at Alice Tully Hall in New York, NY

Two Lives One Body was inspired by my experience of late pregnancy and the anticipation of becoming a mother. The piece is not meant to literally depict the physical aspects of pregnancy, but rather to offer an artistic reflection on the surreal yet deeply holistic experience of carrying two lives within one body—and the gradual transition of letting go, as those two lives become physically separate. Musically, this is expressed through two distinct harmonic layers that persist throughout the piece—sometimes in dissonance, sometimes in consonance, echoing the push and pull of togetherness and separation. My large ensemble compositions have often centered on melody and rhythm, but with this piece I wanted to shift the focus, allowing harmony to lead the musical narrative.

Work #3

State Change: August 6, 1999 6’

August 6, 1999 is the opening track from State Change, a recent album that utilizes surgical records as musical lyrics, combined with aural material produced with various accelerometer and motion capture systems. The album underscores the aural with the medical, ultimately seeking a musical manifestation of acquired disability, and each track is titled after one of my surgery dates. State Change showcases my experimentation with adaptive music technologies, and has production and engineering support from Grammy-award-winning producer William Brittelle and engineer Michael Hammond at Figure 8 Studios in Brooklyn, NY. Released on Released on Better Company Records and FatCat Records’ 130701 Imprint in July 2025, and praised by The Wire as a “lush, full listen…about beauty in self-expression.”