Brenda Hutchinson

Brenda Hutchinson (born June 15, 1954) is a composer and sound artist who has created a body of work she calls "collaborating with strangers." Hutchinson encourages her participants to experiment with sound, share stories, and make music. She often bases her electroacoustic compositions on recordings of these individual collaborative experiences, creating "sonic portraits" or "aural pictures" of people and situations. [Jeffery Byrd, "Brenda Hutchinson," in "Women and Music In America Since 1900: An Encyclopedia," ed. Kristine Burns, 288-9 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001).] In addition to her ethnographic pieces, Hutchinson has composed for film (Liquid Sky, 1982, co-composed with Clive Smith), invented instruments (Giant Music Box, Long Tube, and gestural interface for the Long Tube), and is active as a performer/improviser. [Kyle Gann includes her with performance artists in his text on American music. See Gann, "American Music in the Twentieth Century" (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 1997).] Hutchinson earned her M.A. in Music Composition from the University of California, San Diego, where she studied with Pauline Oliveros, Roger Reynolds, Bernard Rands, and Robert Erickson.Fact|date=December 2007 Performances of her work have been presented in New York City at Lincoln Center, Merkin Concert Hall, and The Kitchen, as well as in San Francisco at New Langton Arts, The Lab, and the Exploratorium. [Several of her pieces have been reviewed by Kyle Gann in "The Village Voice". See Gann,"Music Downtown: Writings From The Village Voice" (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).] She is currently on the faculty at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College.

Discography

*"EEEYAH!" on "The Aerial: A Journal in Sound", Aerial #4, 1989.
*"Family Album", "VOYS", Pauline Oliveros Foundation, HB-CD-2, 1999.
*"Interlude from Voices of Reason" on "TELLUS", "The Audio Cassette Magazine", TELLUS #9, 1985.
*"Liquid Sky" (with Clive Smith), Varese Sarabande LP STV 81181, 1982.
*"Long Tube-Solos and Duets", Pauline Oliveros Foundation, HB-CD-3, 2002.
*"Long Tube Trio" on "Minimall", TELLUS #27, 1993.
*"Seldom Still", cassette, Pauline Oliveros Foundation, BH-C-1.
*"Slow Death on a Thorny Rose" (with Gerald Lindahl) on "TELLUS, The Audio Cassette Magazine", TELLUS #16 "Tango", 1987.
*"Vanishing Act" (with Constance DeJong) on "Siteless Sounds", TELLUS #25, 1991.

External links

*The composer's website [http://www.sonicportraits.org/index2.htm]
*Recordings available through the Deep Listening Catalog [http://www.deeplistening.org/dlc/41hutch.html]
*Two works by Hutchinson available at Soundprint broadcast archive [http://soundprint.org/radio/display_producer/ID/160/name/Brenda+Hutchinson]
*Archival Blog for "The Bell Project" [http://thebellproject.blogspot.com/]

References