Charismatic cellist Maya Fridman has been in the spotlight in recent years with adventurous but always accessible projects in which she is constantly seeking out the boundaries of classical music and performance art. During Gaudeamus 2022, she will play a piece by Saskia Venegas written especially for her, about the myth of Medusa: the chaste woman who was raped by the god Poseidon and who, as ‘punishment’ for this, was banished by Athena and changed into a monster with snakes instead of hair. A cruel story, which in Venegas’ piece painfully exposes the role that raped women still have in our society.