Linda Bouchard is a composer, arranger, conductor and producer. The French Canadian lived in Montréal until 1978 and then went to study composition with Henry Brant at Bennington College. She will keep a close contact with her mentor until his death in 2008. She did her graduate studies at the Manhattan School of Music in New York and has composed over 60 works in a variety of genres, from orchestral and chamber works to dance scores, concerti, and vocal pieces. Her works have been heard extensively on both sides of the Atlantic and have been recorded by the CBC and Analekta in Canada, ECM in Germany, and CRI in the US. She has won four SOCAN awards in Canada and her honors in the US include first prizes in the Princeton Composition Contest, the Indiana State Competition and the National Association of Composers USA Contest. Lately she was awarded a Fromm Foundation award from Harvard University and a SF Foundation for the Arts Commisison Grant as well as a Canada council for the Arts project grant to develop a new work for the Swiss virtuoso Charlotte Hug for viola and electronics.
She lived in New York City from 1979 to 1990 where she composed, led contemporary music groups such as the New York New Music Ensemble and the New Music Consort, and made orchestral arrangements for the Washington Ballet, the St. Luke’s Orchestra and various churches in the Metropolitan area. She was Assistant Conductor for the New York Children’s Free Opera with the St. Luke’s Orchestra from 1985 to 1988.
In 1990, she moved back to Montréal just in time for the premiere of her first orchestral work Elan which was commissioned by the New Music America Festival. From September 1992 to August 1995, Ms. Bouchard held the position of Composer in Residence for the National Arts Centre (NAC) Orchestra in Ottawa, Trevor Pinnock, Music Director. During her residency, she composed several works for the orchestra and organized 20th-Century Music events such as the First Orchestral Workshop and the Summer Music Festival: Atonal Departure.
In 1997, Ms. Bouchard received the Prix Opus as “Composer of the Year” by the Conseil Quebecois de la Culture and she won the Joseph S.Stauffer Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts for her outstanding contributions in music.
In June 2001, Ms Bouchard was invited to participate at IRCAM’s “Stage d’Informatique Musicale” in Paris. Her opera “The House of Words” was premiered at the NYU Experimental Theatre department in 2003.
In the fall 2005, she founded NEXMAP, a non-for-profit arts organization dedicated to the presentation of artistic events. She has bee living in San Francisco with her husband and her son since 1997.
www.lindabouchard.com
www.nexmap.org