[S08E02] May 2026 - Karen Cecilia




In the May 2026 episode of the Theremin 30 podcast, host Rick Reid plays theremin music from Germany, Japan, the USA, and Scotland. Rick's guest is actor-playwright-musician Karen Cecilia.

FEATURED MUSIC*

*The full-length recordings featured in this show were used with the knowledge and permission of the artists and composers. Please support the artists by visiting their websites, purchasing their recordings, and attending their performances. 

ADDITIONAL MUSIC

INTERVIEW GUEST

  • Karen Cecilia, writer/performer of Doorway to Perception, a solo theater production.

CALENDAR OF THEREMIN EVENTS

MEDIA & NEWS LINKS

SUPPORT THIS PODCAST

CONTACT

CREDITS 

Copyright 2026 Rick Reid 


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TRANSCRIPT
(auto-generated, may contain errors)

0:04 David Brower
This is theremin 30. Thirty minutes of Theremin music, news, events and interviews, with a new episode about every 30 days. Now here's your host, Rick Reid.

Rick Reid
This is your host, Rick Reid, with the May 2026 edition of the Theremin 30 podcast. Coming up, I've got new and recent music from Germany, Japan and the USA, and my special guest is Scotland based Therminist actor and playwright Karen Cecilia. Some of the tracks I've chosen for this episode run a bit longer than usual, so I'll have to fade them out before they're finished.
To get in as much of the music as possible within the 30 minute time limit, I'm going to keep my commentary shorter than usual. And besides that, I have a cold and my voice really isn't in top form. So to find out more information about each artist that I'm going to give you within the show, click on their names in this episode, the show notes at theremin30.com. First up is new music from German duo Honey Bizarre. Their new album, Heroine of the Night is set for release this month. The track I'm going to play for you now is called Luana.

Rick Reid 10:56
We began the show with Luanna from the new album by Honey Bizarre called Heroine of the Night. After that, I played an excerpt of a live track by Japanese duo Andmo'. The track is called B Rex from their current album Live from Basements 2024 - 2025. Click on both band names in the show notes for more info. It's time now for the Theremin 30 Calendar of Theremin events. On May 19th, Karen Cecilia presents Doorway to Perception in London, England. On May 22nd, Ghost Notes performs in Taichung, Taiwan. Also on the 22nd, thereminist Cecilie Laganger and guitarist Gisle Krogseth perform classical music in Frederikstad, Norway. May 23rd is the anniversary of Bob Moog's birthday, and on May 30th and 31st Stephen Hamm has a pair of shows in British Columbia, Canada. For these events and more, check out the calendar page at Theremin30.com.

Rick Reid 11:57
In past shows, I've played ambient drone music from Atlanta based Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel. Thereminist Scott Burland has since moved on to a different ambient and experimental project called Javelinas. Here's an excerpt from the title track of their most recent album, Ghost Windows.

Rick Reid 15:23
That was Ghost Windows by Javelinas.Click on their name in this episode's show notes to listen to the full track and the complete album on BandCamp. The multi talented creative artist Karen Cecilia has a new theater production and an upcoming concert. I spoke with her recently about both projects.Karen Cecilia, welcome back to the Theremin 30 podcast.

Karen Cecilia
Hello, thank you so much for having me again and I get to talk about the Theremin again.
This is really exciting. Yeah.

Rick Reid
And we had you on the show last year and, you know, we talked more about what your performance was at the time and not so much about you. I want to find out what is your musical background before you had a theremin.

Karen Cecilia
I grew up as a dancer from the time I could just about walk and in the dancing school also they incorporated musical theater, so I had that already kind of built in. And then in my school, very early on, I don't even know first grade or second grade, they had us take an instrument and I chose the violin. So that began my musical journey. And as I don't play the violin anymore, I so love the violin. Though it did give me the background of music theory and reading music, although I don't sight read, but reading music and understanding structure and training your ear, all these good things that you know when you then move to the theremin you have to have, you know, fine tune for.

Rick Reid 17:03
Yeah, in the right hands, or maybe that's the wrong expression with the theremin, it can actually sound quite a bit like a like a violin.

Karen Cecilia
Yeah, I did a performance recently with COMA, which is the contemporary music for all.
And some of the notes were to make it sound like a violin. And I was playing with other musicians and I said, no, I got that. I can make mine sound like a violin. And you know, it it, it really did sound like a violin. It it does have the high pitch sometimes the I don't want to say, for lack of a better word, the squeal of a violin also.

Rick Reid 17:37
Well, the way I play violin, it's definitely a squeal. How were you introduced to the theremin and and what drew you to it?

Karen Cecilia
So, many years ago in my 20s, going to see bands as we do. I remember that this girl on stage, I had never seen a Theremin. I didn't know what it was. I mean, I think I knew subconsciously what it was from horror movies and sci-fi, the same way everybody you know knows the Theremin, But I had seen her and I couldn't figure out what she was doing, which is really common. And I think it's stuck somewhere in my subconscious because then years later, when I really, really wanted to get back into music, like like very seriously, I started to think about, well, what instruments do I want to go back to the violin and and I did dabble back in the violin and experimented with some other instruments, but but then I I don't know where it popped up, but it just was like, oh, Theremin! And then I remember that I bought a very basic Theremin on eBay. It had one setting and it was "on." That was the setting. It was a tiny little box and it had a little pull up antenna and a little, I mean it was small like the size of a brick. But I used to play it in my room and it gave me some kind of a technique. I really couldn't control it at that time and there was no settings to to kind of calibrate it or anything. But what it did is it gave me the movement of the kind of the contrasting hand up and down, other hand, back and forth, which is so counterintuitive to what your body wants to do. That was really my introduction. I mean, it just must have sat in my subconscious for a long time. It's a very theatrical instrument. And you know, because of my theatre background and the shows that I do, maybe that was also the the draw somewhere back there that it uses the body it it commands the body to, to be used for it to make music.

Rick Reid 19:42
Yeah, in a way it's a almost a dance.

Karen Cecilia
Yeah, yeah.

Rick Reid
You are a playwright, an actor, a musician, probably a few other things we haven't discussed.
What's your center of focus right now with your performances that you're doing?

Karen Cecilia19:59
This started to happen a few years ago that I wanted to start experimenting with putting all of those elements together for every show, and it was a very conscious thing for me.
To to say, Okay, because I'm doing all these things, how can I now combine them all? They're all art, they're all expressive, they all can feed into each other with storytelling. So my focus is putting them all together and making them layered with the show Doorway to Perception, which is my solo show that I'm doing right now. When it's all working together, it's great. It's
A lot of work, but it's great.

Rick Reid
How does the audience participate in this new show?

Karen Cecilia
They do get to choose how much they would like to participate in the music aspect, so there's aspects of the show where I ask them to play along with the rhythm they can make music with, like clapping or whatever they want. They can dance, I invite them to, you know, stand in there, stand up or dance in their seat. So there is that element too, because the show is about the exploration of music. So it's, it's all of our exploration of, of music and, and what it's what our relationship to is. It is and, and the memories that we have surrounding it. So it's not just my memories, but I want people to be involved in their memories. And by doing that, they they get to recall their own memories and and kind of play a little bit of music to the extent that they want to.

Rick Reid 21:39
And on stage you have a Moog Theremini. Is that the only instrument that you're performing with?

Karen Cecilia
Yeah, yeah, the, the Theremini, yeah, yeah, I tried them all out when I was making my jump to like, which one am I going to really take seriously and really start to to learn and, and, and I tried them all out and this one, immediately I was like, oh, this is the one. I love all the the settings that it has. It's so versatile. I use several pedals the same way that a guitarist would use pedals. So I loop, which is really, really a cool thing. I use some other pedals along with the loop and during performances I change different modes, so I might loop in one one of the modes and one of the settings and then play on top of what I've just created. The options are endless.

Rick Reid
So you've got your Doorway to Perception show that you've done a few performances.
You've got at least one more coming up soon, and then you have a concert as well.

Karen Cecilia
Yeah, so I have the one more performance of Doorway to Perception so far that I have booked. I hope to put it on tour for the end of in the fall and into 2027. So it may be coming to a city near you, but I have that May 19th in London in Camden's People's Theatre and then I have in Glasgow in the Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre, which is an amazing space in Glasgow. Echoes of the Storm's Eye, which is completely a concert of Theremin music. And I have invited three musicians to collaborate with me and we are going to be they're going to be playing separate with me and and one of them at a time. And we are going to be showcasing our music ability. And really it's about showcasing the versatility of the Theremin because I think, and of course I'm biased, that it can play almost any type of music. It's so expressive and and an emblematic of of all types of music. And this performance hopefully will show that.

Rick Reid
And who's going to be sharing the stage with you?

Karen Cecilia
So I have a beautiful pianist named Rozan as the first person, and then I have a amazingly talented guitarist named Wilson Cooper who we're going to do a long piece together. And then the third one is Guillaume Subra, who is another Thereminist. We're going to have a great two Theremin piece together. That's going to be interesting in that most people haven't seen one Theremin. They've very unlikely seen two play together.

Rick Reid
Karen, thank you so much for taking the time to visit with me, and it's great to hear about all of your interesting projects.

Karen Cecilia 24:38
Thank you so much, this is such a wonderful podcast. You are really spreading the word when it comes to the global reach of Theremin music.

Rick Reid
Karen Cecilia performs Doorway to Perception on May 19th in London, with more performances to be announced, and her concert Echoes of the Storm's Eye is set for June 4th in Glasgow, Scotland. For details about both shows, visit the calendar page or click on her name in this episode Show notes at theremin30.com. Now let's finish this episode with a sample from her Doorway to Perception show with the track called Enter the Doorway.

Rick Reid 29:32
Thank you so much to Honey Bizarre, Andmo', Javelinas, and my special guest Karen Cecilia for sharing their music. Please support these artists by purchasing their recordings and attending their shows. Until next time, I'm your host, Rick Reid, and I'll see you somewhere in the ether.

David Brower 29:48
You've been listening to the theremin 30 podcast. Visit theremin 30 on the web at theremin30.com.
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