Molly Joyce

Composer and keyboardist Molly Joyce has gained wide attention for works that engage with her own disability, an injured left hand dating from her childhood. She has also composed music for other performers in many genres. Joyce was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1992. As a small child, she took violin lessons. Her left hand was permanently damaged in a car accident when Joyce was seven. She refused to give up her music, switching to the cello and holding the bow with her left hand. Joyce also played the trumpet and began to compose. She attended the Juilliard School in New York, studying composition and graduating with honors. She went on to the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Netherlands, and to Yale University. Her teachers include prominent figures such as Missy Mazzoli, Christopher Rouse, and Christopher Theofanidis. During her undergraduate years, Joyce found, on an online auction service, a Magnus Electric Chord Organ, model 391, a toy instrument that has become the primary vehicle for her own performances. The instrument has chord buttons on the left and a small keyboard on the right, making it ideally suited to Joyce's abilities. She began to write about questions related to disability and the arts, and she has come to consider her disability less as an impediment to her music-making than as an affirmation of music-making based on individual capabilities. Joyce's works have been commissioned by the Milwaukee Symphony, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the New Juilliard Ensemble, among other groups. Her music has been presented at such venues as TEDxMidAtlantic, the Bang on a Can Marathon, and the Danspace Project. Joyce records for the New Amsterdam Records label. She released an EP, Lean Back and Release (2017), containing two works for solo violin and electronics. In 2020, she released her full-length debut, Breaking and Entering, which featured the Magnus organ and explored disability issues. ~ James Manheim