Guest Artist Workshop: Winnie Huang:
November 15, 2021: 6 Hour Intensive: 10:00-17:00h
Location: Offsite Studio: Please register for location details:
This session is open to all students!
We all have bodies, but as creators (musicians, composers, instrumentalists, dancers, conductors, teachers…) we often forget about the importance of this specific aspect as a performative. This Workshop will allow music instrumental and dance students, composition students and conducting students a chance to investigate the possibilities of diverse types of presence on stage through looking at embodiment studies. Music, gestures and drama are always intrinsically intertwined and over the course of the last century a new style has emerged: musical-gestural pieces. Written as music by a composer, these works feature prominent physical elements for visual aesthetics. We will examine the instinctive feel for movement which can guide our own works, through integrating other disciplines’ techniques and through looking into diverse systems of musical writing for movement used in pieces where the visual and choreographic aspects are just as important as the gesture producing the sound. By focusing on exploring the history and evolution of the other genres through the 20th century to today, we will see the changes in the study of movement, presence, the concept of notation and finally explore how we can better understand our role and the process of learning and performing a piece along with our expressive bodies.
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Winnie Huang is a Chinese-Australian violinist, violist, gestural performance artist and composer currently based between Belgium and France. An active performer of new music, Winnie is a founding member and solo violinist of Paris based new music ensemble soundinitiative and co-founder and member of performative duo LOOKOUT. As part of the Contemporary Leaders, Winnie is also currently co-curating the Lucerne Festival Forward.
She continually works with emerging and established composers, such as Jessie Marino, Bernhard Lang, Sivan Cohen Elias, Chris Swithinbank, Clara Iannotta, Michelle Agnes Magalhaes, Joanna Bailie, Charlie Sdraulig, Alexander Schubert, Carolyn Chen, Mauro Lanza and Peter Ablinger and regularly performs with international ensembles such as Nadar Ensemble (BE), lovemusic (FR), Down the Rabbit Hole (BE), Ensemble Linea (FR), Lucilin Ensemble (LUX), MAM (DE), and Australian ensemble Argonaut. Winnie frequently performs at international festivals such as Ars Musica, Donaueschinger Musiktage Festival, Musikfest Berlin, Manifeste, Lucerne Festival, Klang Festival, Festival Royaumont, Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, Festival Automne, Ruhrtriennale, BIFEM, Brisbane Festival, Warsaw Autumn among others.
Career highlights have included solo performances at the Berlin Philharmonie (DE), KKL Lucerne (CH) and the Elb Philharmonie (DE), among many international ensemble tours in Europe, USA and Australia.
An engaging educator, Winnie has consistently taught in Australia, France and Belgium. She has frequently guest tutored at many major institutions including The Raffles Institution and Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (SNG), Fontys Academy of Performance and Arts (NL) and The Buchmann-Mehta School of Music at Tel Aviv University (IR). She has guest lectured at the Orpheus Institute (BE), Basel Academie (CH), École Supérieure d’Art de Lorraine (FR), Kunstuniversität Graz (AT), Melbourne University and Monash University (AUS) and currently teaches at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp (BE) in interdisciplinary musical-gestural works.
Winnie’s strong interest in the performance of musical-gestural pieces is explored frequently through her own original compositions and collaborating with other composers, developing highly gestural contemporary works, while academically, Winnie continues artistic research in the field of interdisciplinary musical-gestural performance and collaborative processes.