Swiss violist, composer, and performance artist Charlotte Hug—this summer’s “artiste étoile”—is a pioneer who crosses borders. For her multipart, multimedia project “Hidden Signs – The Phases of Matter of the Night,” she underwent a 40-hour-long period of sleep deprivation and tracked the resulting changes in her creative processes through the night. Currently on exhibit at the Kunstmuseum Luzern is her musical-visual space installation “Insomnia,” which doubles as a performance venue for the Stellari String Quartet as well as for the solo performance piece “Slipway to Galaxies.” And Hug will work with LUCERNE FESTIVAL ACADEMY students to give the world premiere of her new composition, “Nachtplasmen,” on 3 September.

In “Nachtplasmen”—an orchestral work that at times is played in a completely darkened concert hall, incorporating video projections—Charlotte Hug explores new forms of orchestral self-organization and decision-making procedures. Here the musicians function not just as the performers who realize the piece: they become creative individuals integrally involved in the artistic process by which it evolves. “I anticipate that the Academicians, who are indeed all highly virtuosic musicians, will rediscover a child-like form of music-making so as to gain access to their own inner resources,” explains Hug.

Through rehearsals, she will instruct the students into how to make her “Son Icons” musically productive. These are her seismographic drawings, which “can be turned around, reversed, and read in various directions, like scores. The video score, which I have prepared together with Götz Rogge, expands these ‘analogous’ possibilities, for instance through ‘reversals of color.’ How do my graphite drawings sound when instead of black on white they appear as white on black? Another element is the ‘conducted improvisation’ of Butch Morris, which we have further developed with the London Improvisers Orchestra. The Academy students will learn this during the ensemble rehearsals. And then I will bring the ‘diamonds’ for them to discover, allowing them to shine in a way that has its place within the whole. For the orchestral sound to be not just the sum of individual ideas but to add up to something that is genuinely ‘more,’ you need to have someone who listens and who fits the material together in the literal sense of ‘to compose.’”