ABOUT

Molly Beth Hennig is a vocalist, composer and musicologist specializing in modes of listening, gathering, and play. Her creative and scholarly efforts pursue joy, dance, and a deep love for media across all institutions, disciplines and genres.

For the 2021 Source Song Festival Molly worked as an MN Song Composer under the mentorship of Libby Larsen and David Evan Thomas and set to music Minnesota Poet Laureate and poet-in-residence Joyce Sutphen’s poem “The Cup” (2021). In March 2022, Molly’s setting of Sara Teasdale’s “Let it Be Forgotten” (2021) received third place at the Spark’s & Wiry Cries and Source Song Festival’s Minnesota Song Slam. Molly later worked with Lori Laitman as part of the 2021-2022 National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) Mentoring Program for Composers. Her setting of Teasdale’s poetry, titled “Sister of the Sky” (2022) premiered as part of the Let it be New concert commissioned by the NATS Composer Mentorship Program and the Cincinnati Song Initiative. Alongside art songs, Molly has also written chamber works such as Flurry (2021) for Pierrot ensemble, choir pieces such as Abandonment for SATB, and solo instrument pieces including First Sting for clarinet and Mr. Eel for intermediate piano. Her latest composition, titled Sonata per Dua Lingua is for marimba, vibraphone and saxophone.

As a vocalist, Molly’s repertoire consists of contemporary English, Yiddish and Irish-language art song, musical theater, experimental music, and jazz classics. She has performed several onstage roles in theater productions such as Bellomy in The Fantastics (2017), The Beggar Woman in Sweeney Todd (2018), and Laurie in The Tender Land (2018). Her knowledge of WWI war songs led her to perform alongside Dan Chouinard as a part of WWI remembrance day in New Ulm, MN. 2017. Molly's accolades for her classical vocal performances include the UW Oshkosh Music Department’s Honors Recital, UW Oshkosh Concerto Competition, Richard Keith Porter Memorial Scholarship, Mark Gruenwald Scholarship, Dorothy "Dottie" Adams Memorial Scholarship, and Orville C. Sherman Music Scholarship.

Currently, Molly is a third-year PhD student of the Department of Musicology at UCLA. Her current research interests involve humor as musical discourse, particularly concerning sound studies in online livestreaming, neurodivergence in gaming and play, and narratives of childhood entertainment. Her ongoing project, “Gathering and Listening on Twitch,” received the Keck Humanistic Inquiry Fellowship and has featured at the North American Conference on Video Game Music, the European Conference on Video Game Music and Sound, and the Society for Ethnomusicology. Additionally, her presentation on “opera for babies” featured at the Transnational Opera Studies Conference and received the Ingolf Dahl Award from the AMS Pacific-Southwest Chapter. She currently works under the Graduate Student Research Mentorship for her project on neurodivergent listening and video game soundtracks, and her presentation on the trans-medial music of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise will feature at the 2025 AMS/SMT Joint Annual Meeting.