Sarah Hutchings


Sarah Hutchings née Reneer is an American composer of contemporary opera, art song, and choral works.

Life and career

Sarah Hutchings was born Sarah Reneer in Lexington, Kentucky on September 27, 1984 and raised in Durham, North Carolina where she had her first music lessons at the age of four.
Hutchings received her Bachelor of Music degree in 2007 from Western Carolina University, her Master of Music degree from Florida State University in 2010, and her Doctor of Musical Arts from University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music in 2013. She has studied under Ladislav Kubík, Clifton Callendar, Michael Fiday, Joel Hoffman, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.
Hutchings is married to operatic baritone Mitchell Hutchings and lives in Boca Raton, Florida.

Works

Hutchings's compositions include four short operas, art songs, and a choral work.

Operas

Alex Baker in Parterre Box described the score Hutchings's opera Twenty Minutes or Less as having "imaginatively captured the tonal shifts, moving from spiky, rollicking ensembles to a series of introspective Bernstein-esque arias." In her review of the opera, Anne Midgette of the Washington Post, wrote that Hutchings composed "appealingly for instruments, with a sinuous muted trombone adding a big-band flavor, but needed work setting the text so that it could be understood."