Brenda Hutchinson

Brenda Hutchinson is a composer and sound artist whose work has been presented at international festivals in New Zealand, Europe, Latin America and Canada. Venues in the United States include performances at Lincoln Center, Merkin Concert Hall and The Kitchen in New York, and at New Langton Arts, The Lab and the Exploratorium in San Francisco and “Soundprint” on NPR.

Much of Brenda’s work is centered on creating large-scale experiments in socially based improvisations. She works with sound, stories and performance in order to engage with people and share their experiences and perspectives.

Hutchinson’s recent work includes The Bell Project, an 8,150 mile cross-country journey where Brenda towed a large, 250 lb cast iron school bell behind her Honda and invited the people she encountered along the way to ring the bell and talk about it. The journey is documented at: thebellproject.blogspot.com. Brenda has also been singing into a 9 1/2 foot tube for the past 16 years. More recently, she has designed a gestural interface for the Long Tube and uses it in performance to process and trigger sounds in real time.

Brenda received the Gracie Allen award from the American Women in Broadcast Television and Radio. In 2005, she was awarded the Ucross Residency. Other commissions and awards have come from the American Composers’ Forum, National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer/Reader’s Digest, the McKnight foundation, NYSCA, NYFA and California Arts Council. Since 2002, Brenda has been on the faculty at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College.