Charlotte Hug, violist, High Zero workshop

In partnership with the High Zero festival of experimental improvised music, UMBC presents a workshop by violist/composer/visual artist Charlotte Hug.

Charlotte Hug’s innovative musical-visual solo performances in distinctive locations and her interdisciplinary work have created an international furor. She has played in locations such as the tunnels of the Rhône glacier; the House of Detention, an underground former prison in London; a half-demolished bunker in Humboldthain Berlin; the hot healing springs in the spa town of Bade; and the dockyard in Coph on the Irish Atlantic coast.

This musician of the extreme is constantly pushing the boundaries of her instrument and has reinvented the viola — and this with an instrument built by the Viennese violin maker J.G Thir in 1763. She has developed a number of techniques, including the “soft bow technique,” which enables her to play up to eight voices. Hug’s speciality is also a blend of viola and vocals, which has given rise to her distinctive tonal language.

Hug is active as a concert performer, soloist, composer and conductor of her own works at major festivals in Europe, North America, Latin America and Canada, such as Tage für Neue Musik Zurich, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Berliner Festspiele MaerzMusik, San Francisco International Arts Festival. Her extensive discography includes three solo CDs, as well as improvised music from international collaborations.

Hug gives master classes in improvisation and “instant composing.” She also gives lectures and performance lectures in the field of Transdisciplinarity in the Arts. She is a visiting professor at several universities and art academies, including McGill University Montreal, CNMAT of the University of California Berkeley and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Since 2008, she has held the post of lecturer at the Zurich University of the Arts in interdisciplinary studies.

Admission is free.