Linda Bouchard is a Canadian composer and conductor. She has a B.A. in music (Bennington College, Vermont, 1979) and an M.Mus. in composition (Manhattan School of Music, New York City, 1982). Her teachers were Ransom Wilson, Sue Ann Kahn, Harvey Sollberger (flute), David Gilbert and Arthur Weisberg (conducting), and Elias Tanenbaum, Ursula Mamlock and Henry Brant (composition). She has cited Henry Brant as a major influence in her music. She has experimented with different spatial placements of performers, both as a composer and as a conductor. Her music is characterized by timbral explorations and percussive explosions. She lived in New York from 1979 to 1990, where she composed, led new music ensembles, and made orchestral arrangements for The Washington Ballet, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and various churches in the metropolitan area. She was assistant conductor for New York Children's Free Opera from 1985 to 1988 and guest-conducted the Orchestra of St. Luke's, the American Dance Festival, the New York New Music Ensemble, and others. In 1991, Bouchard returned to Montreal in time for the world premiere of her composition Elan with l’Orchestre Métropolitain. She was composer-in-residence from 1992 to 1995 with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, Canada. In 1997, she moved to San Francisco. In 1999, Bouchard received first prize for “Composer of the Year” from le Conseil Québecois de la Culture and the Joseph S. Stauffer Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts. Her works received five PROCAN and SOCAN awards. Her honors in the U.S. include first prizes from the Princeton Composition Contest, the Indiana State Competition, and the National Association of Composers USA Contest, and a Fromm Music Foundation Award from Harvard University. In 2005, Linda founded New Experimental Music, Art and Production (NEXMAP), a nonprofit arts organization that explores the intersection of traditional artistic practices and new technologies. She served as artistic director until December 2015. That year she received a Fleck Fellowship Award at the Banff Center and was also invited as a Master Instructor in their Music Workshop Program.
Linda Bouchard
Studios
Watson
Linda Bouchard worked in the Watson studio.
Built in 1916 in memory of Regina Watson of Chicago, a musician and teacher, this studio was donated by a group of her friends, along with funds for its maintenance. Originally designed to serve as a composers’ studio with room for performance, Watson was used as a recital hall for chamber music for a…