Brenda Hutchinson

A native of Trenton, New Jersey, Brenda Hutchinson has spent most of her life as a Sound Artist divided between the East and West Coasts. Internationally, she has appeared in New Zealand, Canada, and Brazil. Sound engineer, performer, and composer, her artistic activity reflects the diversity of her skills. She has composed for voice, dance, and film, and has created interactive exhibits and installations. For Brenda, language, stories, and ambient and sampled sounds hold a deep fascination. She finds power and beauty in ordinary expression and in everyday sound. Listening, serving as a witness to human experience, and testifying are at the core of her work.

Brenda's first composition featured excerpts of recorded stories by her grandmother (Storytime, 1986). Later works have included recorded conversations with patients at a New York State Psychiatric Hospital (Voices of Reason, 1991), rituals and chants by members of the Church Universal and Triumphant (Violet Flame, 1993), and stories by her mother (Every Dream Has Its Number, 1996). Brendas first recorded work, EEYAH, features voice, bass drum, and bell in electro-acoustic variations of a Thai pig call. She has composed for a 9 & 1/2 foot tube of her own design, and developed the Giant Music Box exhibit for the Exploratorium, an interactive science museum. Her most recent project, How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall? was inspired by interviews collected during a month long tour with her piano and tape recorder across 18 states. Recently married, Brenda currently lives in San Francisco with her husband.

I: What do you remember as your earliest experience as a composer?

B: I was given a pink and white plastic Sony recorder for Christmas when I was 5. I used to lock myself in the bathroom, since it was a private place. I would record things. The microphone was really bad, and it would distort the sound a lot, so I would listen back to what I recorded and make up names for the sounds. You couldn't possibly tell what they had been in the first place. I used to make up games, like, "Can you identify this sound?" I think these early experiences have more to do with anything I do now than all the piano lessons that I took.

I: Where does your fascination with stories come from?

B: My grandmother. She would distill any experience to a story. My grandmother would call 6 or 7 times a day and say the same stories over and over again. Everybody was tired of hearing them, so they passed the phone on to me. I liked hearing them, so I listened, over and over. Same characters, same settings. Then she started to get senile. The stories started to change, and I got upset. I wanted to record her so that I would have those stories forever. My mother and my grandmother could communicate only by telling stories. I didn't want to do that, at least not have a choice about that. It was impossible to have a conversation with them when any comment would trigger a story. My solution was to stop talking. When I had the inclination to jump in with a story, I would not do it. For a long time I was very conscious of it, and I would listen and listen and listen.

I: So now you listen to other peoples stories.

B: Yeah, well, I'm better at it. I'm still a good talker.

 I: Do you see a connection in the diverse kinds of pieces you have created?

B: A thread that might be in my work, from the stories to the tube is to somehow make sure that (the voice, the instrument, the story) stays real, transparent. You don't need anything except your attention and your will to do something.

I: You are a dynamic performer. Why did you wait so long to perform your own work?

B: I was terrified of performing. I was 35 before I decided that, if I was going to perform, that I had better do it. The first piece that I did was EEYAH! That was in 1989. The challenge of that was that I was not accomplished at any instrument, so I decided to use my own voice and my own experience as a way to make myself really vulnerable and make a more emotional connection. I had been setting up really challenging material for my pieces. And I had been creating these epic things that take a really long time to do. Work confronting deep, personal fears. Like the work I did in the mental institution. Performance really changed everything. I was more involved in my work, personally. When I became involved, personally, in the performance, the work became much more intimate.

I: What drives you to take on the next project?

B: Immediately, I am developing a 30 minute radio show for the piano piece. Then I want to modify the tube so that I can play with other sounds, pre-recorded, environmental, other voices. The next big idea is in the very sketchy phase, but it will focus on male violence. I will incorporate stories as usual, using my speaking voice, telling my stories, my experiences with my father and grandfather, and also incorporate the tube. I'm finally ready to confront this one in a public way. Its time to find a way to put my experience out there, and think about how people's actions have consequences which ripple throughout the generations.

Links:

• Being Around Brenda Hutchinson, an essay
• A sound clip of the composer speaking (RealAudio)
• http://www.deeplistening.org/dlc/41hutch.html