An interview with theremin player and teacher Kip Rosser about the discovery of Juliet Shaw’s archive and custom theremin (probably built by Léon Theremin himself).
Eric Ross is a composer, performer, multi-instrumentalist, and theremin player. He has written countless scores in his long career, including many pages of original music for the theremin. He has presented rich multimedia performances worldwide, mixing music, video, and computer art and dance. And he has released several recordings. In this interview, Eric tells us about his long musical journey.
A 1969 article telling the story of Wendy Carlos’ “Switched-On Bach” seminal album. A collection of pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach performed on the Moog modular synthesizer, “Switched-On Bach” legitimized the electronic synthesizer as a real musical instrument and changed forever the public perception of electronic music, showing that it could be something very different from ” the academy approved ‘ugly’ music, “as Carlos put it.
Lydia Kavina is one of the greatest thereminists of all time. The last protégé of Léon Theremin, she started studying the theremin at the age of nine. She played a fundamental role in the so-called “renaissance of the theremin,” performing all over the world, making recordings, participating in film soundtracks, writing original music for theremin, and teaching the instrument to new generations of thereminists. I had the pleasure of exchanging a few words with her.
The latest release of Timeless Sonic Factory, the creature of long-time thereminist Maurizio “ErMan” Mansueti, is a beautiful, intense, and captivating theremin concept album. In addition to putting the theremin at center stage, it shows it in a new light.
Zenaide Hanenfeldt was one of Leon Theremin’s first associates in the United States. She played a leading role, from 1929 to 1934, in the American adventure of Leon Theremin, appearing in some of the most important theremin events of the period and experiencing a brief period of intense and ephemeral celebrity as a theremin diva. Later, she almost disappeared into oblivion, confined to stingy annotations in the history of the theremin. Let’s find out a little more about her.
Katica Illényi is an artist of many talents. She plays the violin, sings, tap dances, and plays the theremin. We had the pleasure of asking her some questions.
Although Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů does not enjoy the same fame as other composers of the same period, he certainly has a prominent place in twentieth-century music. He is also well known by theremin enthusiasts thanks to Fantasia for theremin, oboe, piano, and string quartet, the composition commissioned to him in 1944 by Lucie Bigelow Rosen. Let’s try to understand a little more about him and follow the path that led him from a Moravian village to Manhattan, where the fortuitous meeting took place.
In this short movie, filmed and edited by Peter Pringle, Reid Welch demonstrates the “Stout” Theremin.
The Stanford News Service report, penned by Olivia Mattis, about the 1991 visit of Léon Theremin to Stanford University.