Molly Joyce explains her piece "Perspective"
Watch my interview with US-based new music composer MollyJoyce on her piece "Perspective". It is an ongoing project featuring disabled interviewees responding to what access, care, interdependence, and more mean to them.
The project has seen multiple formats, ranging from in-person installation, and dance performance, to virtual and interactive talkbacks. Past presenters include Americans for the Arts, Hirshhorn Museum, Bemis Center, The Great Northern Festival, Halcyon, The Peace Studio, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, Surel’s Place, and National Sawdust.
Questions:
1. What is the short history of the piece?
2. What is the concept of this piece?
3. What is the central message of the piece and how is this message communicated?
4. How sensorial or listening experience is created through this piece?
5. What software/hardware have you used to create this piece?
6. What was the process of composing this piece?
7. What roles play video in this piece?
8. Can you imagine the same piece without the use of video/sound?
9. What are the basic compositional principles used in this piece?
Molly Joyce explores disability as her creative source. She has an impaired left hand from a previous car accident. The primary vehicle in her pursuit is her electric vintage toy organ, an instrument she bought on eBay that suits her body and engages her disability on a compositional and performative level. She is currently a Dean’s Doctoral Fellow at the University of Virginia, focusing on Composition and Computer technology.
Molly’s creative projects have been presented and commissioned by Carnegie Hall, TEDxMidAtlantic, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Bang on a Can Marathon, Danspace Project, Americans for the Arts, National Sawdust, Music Academy of the West, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, National Gallery of Art, Classical: NEXT, and featured in outlets such as Pitchfork, eBay, Red Bull Radio, WNYC’s New Sounds, and I Care If You Listen. Her compositional works have been commissioned and performed by ensembles including Vermont, New World, New York Youth, Pittsburgh, Albany, and Milwaukee Symphony Orchestras, as well as the New Juilliard, Decoda, Contemporaneous ensembles, and Harvard Glee Club. She has also written for publications 21CM, Disability Arts Online, and Women in Foreign Policy, and is a member of the Americans for the Arts Artists Committee.