Studio Concert at the Robert Sterl House

Where the artist Robert Sterl (1867–1932) once worked with light and color, this year’s studio concert will create images through sound: In the painter’s former studio, Matthias Hübner becomes a musical boundary-crosser.

The cellist and composer explores the possibilities of his instrument, taking it far beyond familiar notions of sound. As a powerfully grooving accompaniment, a sobbing or screeching voice, and a rock-infused, meditative solo instrument, the cello unfolds an astonishing variety of sounds in Hübner’s hands.

Using both a classical and an electric cello, a loop station, and sound effects, he layers sounds on top of one another, creating fascinating—and at times whimsical—soundscapes from a single instrument. In the process, virtuosity, a spirit of experimentation, and the joy of playing combine to create an immediate musical experience.

Thus, the music enters into a special dialogue with the historic studio: where color once created spaces, spaces now emerge from sound—a journey across the boundaries between past and present, composition and improvisation, the familiar and the unheard-of.

Matthias Hübner studied in Rostock and Dresden on a scholarship from the German Music Foundation (Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben) and is a multiple winner of the “Indie International Songwriting Contest.”