ABOUT

Molly Beth Hennig is a vocalist, composer and musicologist specializing in gathering, play and activity. 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. Recently, Molly 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 awards 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.

Furthermore a participant in musicological research, Molly was awarded a grant from the Office of Student Research & Creative Activity for her scholarship of Schumann's Frauenliebe und Leben (2019) and Ligeti’s Mysteries of the Macabre (2020), both of which won the Provost’s award for Outstanding Undergraduate Research. Molly's academic writing on the performance of Frauenliebe und Leben is featured within the 2021 issue of the Oshkosh Scholar.

Molly is currently a first-year PhD student of musicology under fellowship at the Herb Alpert School of Music at UCLA. Molly received her Master of Arts in Historical Musicology in 2023 under the Leland Coon Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Molly’s Master's thesis “Restoring the Amherst Opera House: The Struggle for a Site of Memory, Gathering, and Heritage,” details the history and personnel surrounding the Amherst Opera House’s restoration in the village of Amherst, Wisconsin. At the 2023 “Music and the Internet” conference at the University of Chicago, Molly presented her paper “Gathering and Listening on Twitch: A Brief Ethnographic Study.” Molly’s additional interests include music in gaming and play, animated media, and gathering spaces both online and offline, and she currently serves as secretary and panel moderator for the AMS Ludomusicology Interest Group.