«The violist Charlotte Hug has achieved a great feat with the invention of the soft bow technique. Hug sets new standards - this much can be said without exaggeration.»
ANJA BUEHNEMANN–LANDBOTE 1999
«Hug's 'trick' is that she incorporates her vocalizations inside the unfolding patterns of her viola; except it's no trick at all - gesturally and harmonically, timbrally too, Hug has magick'ed up with what's effectively a hybrid 'instrument' that only she can access.»
PHILIP CLARK–THE WIRE 2011
«Her music is exceptional in many ways and aspects, but the most – the marvelous ability of the composer is to base the music on main basics of classical music and modify the sound in shocking, organic and surprising way. It’s a wild, roaring, tremendous and sparkling mix, where together meet academic avant-garde, free improvisation, experimental music and the citations of various chorals and polyphonic compositions of Baroque and Renaissance. This masterful synthesis helps Charlotte Hug to create an incredible, dynamic and interesting sound, multi-colorful and rich musical pattern, multi-layered facture and solid melodic and rhythmic base. Charlotte Hug manages to create a splendid, bright, exceptional and innovative sound.» AVANTSCENE WORLDPRESS 2019
«There has always been something special about a performance by Charlotte Hug. Her revolutionary playing celebrated in the unique 'soft-bowing' technique has turned the shrill glissandi of the viola into hues of deep, indulgent warmth. As her passion for the human interaction with her instrument developed, she began to meld her unique vocalistics into her artful reinvention of the viola and her music. Hug's brave adventure in which Charlotte Hug reigns supreme. It is here that her world of music awakens the spirits dancing in the flesh.»
AUL D'GAMA ROSE–ALLABOUTJAZZ 2019
«By reinterpreting her own drawings “Son-Icons” made on site – with extraordinary results. So far the sonic potential of the viola has remained unexplored. Not anymore.»
DAN WARBURTON–PARISTRANSATLANTIC 2000
«Magique! La voix naturelle évite le pathétique. Cette voix de feu-follet ne se contente pas de nous surprendre par ses audaces et sa justesse de ton. Il n’y a pas de mots pour décrire une telle symbiose avec l’alto et les mouvements de l’archet. La voix d’un oracle ou de la sibylle….Bouleversant n’est pas encore le mot qui convient, …La performance se déroule au milieu de ses Son-Icons, dessins au graphite sur des surfaces semi-transparentes qui gravitent dans l’espace environnant. Leurs formes en amas de toiles d’araignées évoquent ses rhizomes sonores en mouvement perpétuel, chaos de l’inconscient et cheminement de la création intentionnelle…La musique de Charlotte Hug acquiert ici une dimension extraordinaire, organique et raffinée, intense et recueillie…Une musique rare et un cédé qu’on réécoute avec un bonheur grandissant. Exceptionnel!»
JEAN-MICHEL VAN SCHOUWBURG–IMPROJAZZ 2012
«The performance itself is played directly with radical nocturnal and extreme experiences. In the case of the former, we have the phenomenal vocal improvisations, which conjure up sounds as natural as they are unreal, from deep, bird-like cooing to whooping in glistening falsetto.»
URS MATTENBERGE–LUZERNERZEITUNG 2011
«Scenic music in constant motion with the sensational violist Charlotte Hug... »
HAMBURGER ABENDBLATT 2005
«The whole world in one viola - a furious start. In her concert ‘Anderwelten’ Charlotte Hug conjured up a cosmos of sound that you would never expect to find in the four strings of the viola.»
MÜNCHNER ABENDZEITUNG 2002
«A play of madness and irony that is hard to resist.»
CHRISTOPH HAFFTR–DISSONANZ 2004
«Charlotte Hug's music acquires here an extraordinary dimension, organic and refined, intense and contemplative…»
JEAN-MICHEL VAN SCHOUWBURG–IMPROJAZZ - 2012
«Charlotte Hug, a viola-player who applied much the same vigorously energy to the fiddle that Ornette Coleman once did.»
Q MAGAZINE 2007
«Il a fallu peu de temps à Charlotte Hug pour s’imposer parmi les improvisateurs européens...»
GUSTAVE CERUTTI–MPROJAZZ 2002
«Charlotte Hug is finding new and fertile ground for string instruments in electroacoustic settings.»
MICHALE ROSENSTEIN–SIGNAL TO NOISE 2000
«Sonic landscapes…beyond imagination.»
FREDERICK MARONGIS–MUSIC EXTREME BUENOS AIRES 2003
«An encyclopedia of extended string techniques, supreme control over sound, music pregnant with uncompromising originality.»
DEREK TAYLOR–ONE FINAL NOTE 1998
«Over one hour of free improvisation that breaks constantly musical paradigms and stretches boundaries with originality and inspiration.»
FEDERICO MARONGIU– MUSIC EXTREME 2001
«... takes string music to another level.»
BILL SMITH – CODA 1998
«Charlotte Hug is perhaps the most innovative artist in Switzerland: viola player, voice artist, performer, composer, visual artist.» PIRMIN BOSSART–JAZZNMORE 2019
«What a phenomenon, this slender artist and musician of the extremes with her wild mane of hair. Hug draws unbelievable sounds from the strings and produces even more unbelievable clicks in her throat. A shaman, a banshee, a Yma Sumac, surreal fauna, from the bird of paradise to the horse on the land, she transcends the sounds of the viola.»
RAUL DITTMANN–BAD ALECHMY 2019
«Charlotte Hug has invented a new genre of art with her performances, made up of stories, sounds, images and herself.»
SUSANNE KÜBLER–TAGESANZEIGER 2011
«This duo (of voice and viola) was produced in real time by just one person controlled by just one brain – magnificent.»
JOHN EYLES–ALL ABOUT JAZZ 2012
«In her associative performance, which blurs the boundaries between outside and inside, the Swiss artist Charlotte Hug allows herself be guided by her voice, but with the viola she has another instrument for transcendental rapture.»
GAN–WIEN 2010
«Hug's viola playing has always displayed great variety and invention, so it is no surprise that her voice is a flexible and versatile instrument, capable of producing a range of sounds from prolonged high frequency squealing tones through to surprisingly low frequency guttural utterances reminiscent of Sainkho Namchylak at her more demonic. That vocal range enables Hug to mirror her viola playing with her voice so that the two can become intertwined and indistinguishable… Hug, just as often, opts for contrasting viola and voice as having them occupy similar territory. Hug's vocals become increasingly playful… As with any improvising duo, the strength of the music lies in the differing positions that the two strands take up relative to each other and the ways in which they react and adapt to each other. So it proves here—with the important proviso that this duo (of voice and viola) was produced in real time by just one person controlled by just one brain. …Hug employing her full range of techniques on both instruments and blending them together into a coherent and satisfying whole. Magnificent!» JOHN EYLE–ALL ABOUT JAZZ–2012
«Trance may be found in the concentration with which Charlotte Hug draws the dissonant, fragile and filigree chord fragments from the stillness, by releasing the bow hairs of her viola from their holder, in order to add to those sounds with a delicate collage of multifaceted vocalises.
ANDREAS FELBER–STANDART VIENNA 2010
«Charlotte Hug is a bird of paradise of the music world.... Not only outwardly does she resemble the artist Pipilotti Rist; also in terms of her creativity and idiosyncrasy, her presence is akin to the sensual fantasy of the pop star of the art scene.»
CHRISTIAN HUBSCHMID–SONNTAGSZEITUNG 2011
«Charlotte Hug is a brilliant violist, improviser and performer who uses such idiosyncratic inventions as the 'soft bow' … the music grows out of a dialogue between the visual and the acoustic.»
JOHN PITT–NEW CLASSICS 2002
«Adventures on the edge of music***** For five hours, Charlotte Hug stood in the dockyard in Cork, Ireland, as the water rose to her throat. She played and sang the entire time. In a less dramatic but more extreme experiment, she had herself locked into a Zürich’s sleep laboratory for 40 hours, playing, singing and drawing without a break. This year’s artiste étoile at the Lucerne Festival does nothing by halves. Both the above experiences inspired “Slipway to galaxies”, her solo performance in the Lucerne museum of Art. In a sepulchral gloom surrounded by the translucent ribbons of her graphic “Son-Icons”, Hug makes eerie notes with her voice and viola. She is tall, rake-thin and wild-haired, and struts between the meters-long pages of her self-drawn “scores” with assured theatricality. She undoes the screw at the end of her bow and wraps the loosened horsehair around all four strings to produce unearthly chords. Then she lets the heel of her unfastened bow fall on the wooden floor, and adds the effect like a drum.»
FINANCIAL TIMES–SHIRLEY APTHORP 2011
«The viola unleashed... Furious and wild, "Delirum" lets rip - an improvisation that oscillates between joyous rapture and madness. ...when she plays with a wet, relaxed bow, the soft hair strokes all four strings, which now purr in multiple voices. And where the qualities of the resonating body are used percussively or as painting with sound, the music brings to mind the DJs who ‘scratch’ on the empty grooves to bring the medium, the recording medium itself, into consciousness»
UELI BERNAYS–NZZ 2003
«Slipway to Galaxies is beyond charming: it bewitches, moves, captivates and enthralls. With her viola and her beautiful siren’s voice, Hug unfolds riches of invention, sensuality, and wordless storytelling skills. “Anderwelten” vividly evokes marine soundscapes to the point where I started doubting that it was indeed performed without any electronics (yet it’s true). This is a mature work by an accomplished artist with astounding free improvising skills. »
FRACOIS COUTURE - MR. DELIRE–ALL MUSIC GUIDE 2012
«Charlotte Hug, currently based in London. Her playing was technically fascinating and she added a lot of theatrical and vocal elements to take it to another level. Hug’s string touch was often light, but was insistently out and played with good humor.»
BYRON COLEY–THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ 2006
«Hug is a beguiling and theatrical performer, using the space not only for its reverberant possibilities, but also as a setting to suggest a transgressive element in her play. Hug is to detach the hairs from the bow and draw them over the strings, holding the bow itself under the instrument. This produces a rich and resonant drone for a cantabile quality, matching her voice. All of these engaging elements served to produce an hour of transfixing music to start the second day of the festival with a bang and a chirp.»
ERIC HILL–VICTORIAVILLE QC 2018
«It's immediate, technically daunting work of a rare virtuosity, but as with the best music that technique is in the service of the mystery of creation…It's all concentrated focus, a meditation at once on resonances and the mechanics of hands, strings and bow, an expanding musical consciousness that gradually takes in voice to create a compelling sonic universe. Within that world there's tremendous variety in her materials: Throughout it's fascinating and subtle music, clearly the expression of an individual even when it's hard to imagine it being performed by one. »
STUART BROOMER–POINT OF DEPARTURE 2011
«There, between the senses, is a third element. This is what the cosmopolitan artist Charlotte Hug searches for tirelessly - always on a mission to find what lies between the media, between the senses... Glimpses into the wondrous world of Charlotte Hug reveal that her often seemingly whimsical art is the compelling product of thoughts examined consistently through to the end, beyond norms and classifications.»
BARBARA ECKLE–DEUTSCHLANDRADIO 2011
