Molly Joyce

Last updated
Molly Joyce
Born1992
Pittsburgh, PA

Molly Joyce is a composer, performer, and recording artist. She is currently an adjunct faculty member in composition at New York University. [1]

Contents

Early life and education

Molly Joyce was born in 1992 in Pittsburgh, PA. [2] She started her instrumental music education on the violin. After a car accident permanently damaged her left hand at the age of 7, she began playing the cello by using her left hand for the bow and right hand on the fingerboard. She also learned to play the trumpet and began composing on the computer.

Joyce attended The Juilliard School for her undergraduate degree (graduating with scholastic distinction). She also earned degrees at Royal Conservatory in The Hague, where she was the recipient of the Frank Huntington Beebe Fund Grant, and Yale School of Music.

Joyce has studied with Samuel Adler, Martin Bresnick, Guus Janssen, David Lang, Hannah Lash, Missy Mazzoli, Martijn Padding, Christopher Rouse, [3] and Christopher Theofanidis.

Career

Joyce has contributed compositions to many recordings of other artists. As a solo artist, she released an EP, Lean Back and Release, in 2017 and an LP titled Breaking and Entering in 2020. Among her many live performances was a talk and performance given at TedxMidAtlantic in 2017. [4]

Disability and composition style

After the car crash that deformed her left hand, Joyce began to explore ways to be musical that accommodated her disability. In graduate school, Joyce began an independent study on disability and the arts. During this study, she found that her disabled hand allowed her to create distinct music that incorporated the differing abilities of her hands. Consequently, her view of ability and disability developed, viewing them not as a dichotomy but as a spectrum that affords opportunities to people based on their individual capabilities.

Her primary instrument is a vintage Magnus Electric Chord Organ Model 391, which she found in 2011 after years of searching for an instrument that would fit her body, with individual chord buttons placed on the left side and a small piano keyboard on the right. Joyce realized that the instrument was “made for my form and made for my deform.” [4]

Joyce’s musical style is not only influenced by her disability, but by other musical genres such as Minimalism, Impressionism, and Jazz. [5] Joyce has composed for large ensembles, chamber groups, and soloists.

Discography

LPs

YearTitleArtistNotesLabel
2020Breaking and EnteringMolly JoyceDescribed as “debut full-length album voice, vintage toy organ, and electronics in exploring breaking and entering into a new body and disability.” [6] New Amsterdam Records

EPs

YearTitleArtistNotesLabel
2017Lean Back and ReleaseMolly JoyceTwo tracks for solo violin with live and pre-recorded electronicsNew Amsterdam Records

As contributing composer

YearTitleArtistNotesLabel
2020STICKLIPBec PlexusJoyce composed track “think out loud”New Amsterdam Records
2020Dawn Chorus Grand Valley State University (GVSU) New Music EnsembleJoyce composed the track “Bite the Dust” Innova Recordings
2020CausticsEvan ChapmanJoyce composed the track “Crash and Burn”
2018On BehalfBrianna Matzke & Hajnal PivnickJoyce composed the track “Down and Out”
2017Petits ArtéfactsNick PhotinosJoyce composed the track “Sit and Dance”New Amsterdam Records
2016A O R T AVicky ChowJoyce composed the track “Rave”New Amsterdam Records

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Accordion</span> Bellows-driven free-reed aerophone musical instrument

Accordions are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free reed aerophone type, colloquially referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist. The concertina, harmoneon and bandoneon are related. The harmonium and American reed organ are in the same family, but are typically larger than an accordion and sit on a surface or the floor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Music</span> Form of art using sound

Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect of all human societies, a cultural universal. While scholars agree that music is defined by a few specific elements, there is no consensus on their precise definitions. The creation of music is commonly divided into musical composition, musical improvisation, and musical performance, though the topic itself extends into academic disciplines, criticism, philosophy, and psychology. Music may be performed or improvised using a vast range of instruments, including the human voice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Schumann</span> German composer, pianist and critic (1810–1856)

Robert Schumann was a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. His teacher, Friedrich Wieck, a German pianist, had assured him that he could become the finest pianist in Europe, but a hand injury ended this dream. Schumann then focused his musical energies on composing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Musical composition</span> An original musical piece, or the process of creating a new piece

Musical composition can refer to an original piece or work of music, either vocal or instrumental, the structure of a musical piece or to the process of creating or writing a new piece of music. People who create new compositions are called composers. Composers of primarily songs are usually called songwriters; with songs, the person who writes lyrics for a song is the lyricist. In many cultures, including Western classical music, the act of composing typically includes the creation of music notation, such as a sheet music "score," which is then performed by the composer or by other musicians. In popular music and traditional music, songwriting may involve the creation of a basic outline of the song, called the lead sheet, which sets out the melody, lyrics and chord progression. In classical music, orchestration is typically done by the composer, but in musical theatre and in pop music, songwriters may hire an arranger to do the orchestration. In some cases, a pop or traditional songwriter may not use written notation at all and instead compose the song in their mind and then play, Violin record it from memory. In jazz and popular music, notable sound recordings by influential performers are given the weight that written or printed scores play in classical music.

In music theory, the key of a piece is the group of pitches, or scale, that forms the basis of a musical composition in classical, Western art, and Western pop music.

Tonality or key: Music which uses the notes of a particular scale is said to be "in the key of" that scale or in the tonality of that scale.

Sheet music is a handwritten or printed form of musical notation that uses musical symbols to indicate the pitches, rhythms, or chords of a song or instrumental musical piece. Like its analogs – printed books or pamphlets in English, Arabic, or other languages – the medium of sheet music typically is paper. However, access to musical notation since the 1980s has included the presentation of musical notation on computer screens and the development of scorewriter computer programs that can notate a song or piece electronically, and, in some cases, "play back" the notated music using a synthesizer or virtual instruments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harry Partch</span> American composer (1901–1974)

Harry Partch was an American composer, music theorist, and creator of unique musical instruments. He composed using scales of unequal intervals in just intonation, and was one of the first 20th-century composers in the West to work systematically with microtonal scales, alongside Lou Harrison. He built custom-made instruments in these tunings on which to play his compositions, and described the method behind his theory and practice in his book Genesis of a Music (1947).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Composer</span> Person who writes music

A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Autoharp</span> Musical string instrument

An autoharp or chord zither is a string instrument belonging to the zither family. It uses a series of bars individually configured to mute all strings other than those needed for the intended chord. The term autoharp was once a trademark of the Oscar Schmidt company, but has become a generic designation for all such instruments, regardless of manufacturer.

Joan Linda La Barbara is an American vocalist and composer known for her explorations of non-conventional or "extended" vocal techniques. Considered to be a vocal virtuoso in the field of contemporary music, she is credited with advancing a new vocabulary of vocal sounds including trills, whispers, cries, sighs, inhaled tones, and multiphonics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kristin Hersh</span> American musician

Martha Kristin Hersh is an American singer, guitarist and songwriter known for her solo work and with her rock bands Throwing Muses and 50FootWave. She has released eleven solo albums. Her guitar work and composition style ranges from jaggedly dissonant to traditional folk. Hersh's lyrics have a stream-of-consciousness style, reflecting her personal experiences.

The morna is a music and dance genre from Cape Verde.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slide Hampton</span> American trombonist (1932–2021)

Locksley Wellington Hampton was an American jazz trombonist, composer and arranger. As his nickname implies, Hampton's main instrument was slide trombone, but he also occasionally played tuba and flugelhorn.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Keiko Abe</span> Japanese composer and marimba player

Keiko Abe is a Japanese composer and marimba player. She has been a primary figure in the development of the marimba, in terms of expanding both technique and repertoire, and through her collaboration with the Yamaha Corporation, developed the modern five-octave concert marimba.

Sarah Frances Beamish is a British composer and violist. Her works include chamber, vocal, choral and orchestral music. She has also worked in the field of music, theatre, film and television, as well as composing for children and for her local community.

Gabriela Lena Frank is an American pianist and composer of contemporary classical music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lisa Bielawa</span> American composer

Lisa Carol Bielawa is a composer and vocalist. She is a 2009 Rome Prize winner in Musical Composition and spent a year composing as a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kit Downes</span> British musician

Kit Downes is a BBC Jazz Award winning, Mercury Music Award nominated, solo recording artist for ECM Records.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Disability in the arts</span>

Disability in the arts is an aspect within various arts disciplines of inclusive practices involving disability. It manifests itself in the output and mission of some stage and modern dance performing-arts companies, and as the subject matter of individual works of art, such as the work of specific painters and those who draw.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Brown (musician)</span> American composer and musical performer

Elizabeth Brown is an American contemporary composer and performer, known for music described as otherworldly, which employs microtonal expression, unique instrumentation and a morphing, freewheeling language. Her work is frequently commissioned for specific ensembles and has been performed internationally in solo, chamber and orchestral contexts at venues including Carnegie Hall, Boston's Symphony Hall, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Hanoi National Conservatory of Music. She has written extensively for flute, unconventional instruments such as the Partch complement and theremin, and the traditional Asian shakuhachi and đàn bầu; she combines them in original ways that mix Western and Eastern, ancient and modern, and experimental and conventionally melodic sensibilities. Composer and critic Robert Carl calls Brown a "gentle maverick" whose avant-gardism bends and subverts traditional tropes with an unironic, unpretentious manner "that is fresh and imaginative, but never afraid of beauty, nor of humane warmth."

References

  1. "Molly Joyce". NYU Steinhardt. Retrieved 18 August 2020.
  2. "Artists Molly Joyce - 21CM".
  3. "Molly Joyce Biography". Knight Wind Music.
  4. 1 2 Composer Molly Joyce | The Roof. YouTube . Archived from the original on 2021-12-08.
  5. Sunier, John (4 February 2012). "'Muses Nine' = Works by nine female composers - Becky Billock, p. - Muses Nine". Audiophile Audition. Retrieved 18 August 2020.
  6. "Discography". November 21, 2016.