FEATURED MUSIC*
- "I Saw the Bright Shinies" (Moog Sound Lab) - The Octopus Project (Austin, TX, USA)
- "Demain" - Charlotte Dubois (Lille, France)
- "Time Traveller" - Tharsis Project featuring Ernesto Mendoza and Jon Carr (Mexico City, Mexico)
- "Primordial Descent" (excerpt) - Modulight (Leicester, UK)
ADDITIONAL MUSIC
- "Opera Glasses" - Phlogiston Theory & Ron Allen (Denver, CO / Seattle, WA, USA)
- "Time Shadows" - Phlogiston Theory (Denver, CO, USA)
- "No Static at All" - Phlogiston Theory (Denver, CO, USA)
- "Astral's Journey Part 1" - New Note Orchestra (Brighton, England)
INTERVIEW GUEST
- Conall Gleeson and Alexx Mazonowicz of the New Note Orchestra
CALENDAR OF THEREMIN EVENTS
- Visit the Theremin 30 Calendar of Theremin Events for links and details of events mentioned in this episode.
MEDIA LINKS
- The Theremin 30 Playlist on YouTube includes music videos and concert performances of songs featured in this podcast.
- The Juliet Shaw Legacy Project
CONTACT
- Write to the show: theremin30podcast@gmail.com
- Record a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theremin30/message
- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/theremin30/support
CREDITS
- Producer/Writer/Host: Rick Reid
- Opening and closing announcer: David Brower
Copyright 2023 Rick Reid
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David Brower
00:04
Rick Reid
00:20
Rick Reid
08:51
Rick Reid
09:54
Rick Reid
16:57
Conall Gleeson
17:02
Yeah,
thank you for having us.
Alexx Mazonowicz 17:26
Thanks
for inviting.
Rick Reid
17:28
Conall, you're the music director?
Conall Gleeson
17:30
That's
right. I've been working with New Note Orchestra since 2016. And what an
amazing journey it has been for me.
Rick Reid
17:37
And
Alexx, you play keyboards and, of course, theremin.
Alexx Mazonowicz 17:41
Yep,
that's right.
Rick Reid
17:42
What is
the New Note Orchestra?
Conall Gleeson
17:45
Well,
New Note Orchestra was set up in 2015. Its focus is to attract people who are
in recovery from drugs and substance abuse and using music as a way to sustain
their sobriety and their well being. What we do is try to develop those persons
as musicians. They've had a whole journey where they self-identified and come
to terms with their addiction. People want to move on from that kind of way of
self-identifying. And we help them self-identify as musicians, so they come as
addicts and become musicians. And that's how we like to see it.
Rick Reid
18:17
So,
Alexx, how did you get involved with the orchestra?
Alexx Mazonowicz 18:20
I am in
recovery. And I have been in recovery for almost 15 years and a couple of
months it will be since I had my last drink. I joined in 2020, about a month
before we all locked down actually for COVID. It was just after I'd moved to
Brighton, but I heard about the group from a friend in another recovery group.
Somebody just mentioned to me about the orchestra. And I looked it up online
and kind of liked what they were doing. And I listened to some of the music. I
was quite impressed by it. And so I just found out where they were practicing.
And I turned up one Tuesday in February 2020 With my theremin under my arm just
basically where do I plug in?
Rick Reid
18:34
What was
that like to have a thereminist show up?
Conall Gleeson
19:01
Oh, it
was so weird because primarily we've got lot of people play guitars, we've got
people doing keyboards, and we also have a multitude of people playing hand
chimes. So when a theremin arrived at the door with Alexx I was thinking, well,
how are we going to work this one into our sonic ambience? But Alexx has proved
to be very versatile and imaginative with his theremin. And it's been a
blessing and a wonderful addition to the orchestra. 'Cause it can do two
things: it can play melodies, it also can add these strange textures to the
sound that we make, you know. So that's really fantastic.
Rick Reid
19:35
I guess
we should define the word orchestra because the New Note Orchestra is not a
traditional symphony orchestra.
Conall Gleeson
19:42
It's
called an orchestra because it's quite large in size, a bit larger than an
ensemble or a band, though might have 20 to 25 persons so it kind of in size
and embodiment constitutes an orchestra. That's where the name originally was
come from, but we might call ourselves an electric orchestra. 'Cause we're
plugged in, we're amplified. And we're a lot of guitars, we've got some wind
instruments. And we've got lots of synths and we've got a theremin, yeah.\
Alexx Mazonowicz 20:06
I think
orchestra, though, is a good description of the ambition of what we're trying
to do. I think if we just called ourselves a group, a lot of people would be
expecting a rock group or something like that. Whereas with an orchestra,
there's this idea of something big and very long, ambitious pieces, that we
did. So, it works for me.
Conall Gleeson
20:24
Yeah.
Rick Reid
20:26
I'm curious,
from your point of view, Alexx, how you find your place in the orchestra. And I
mean that both sort of philosophically as a thereminist, and also practically,
where you need space around your instrument to be able to perform it correctly.
Alexx Mazonowicz 20:34
One of
the reasons I joined was because I wanted to play my theremin with a group,
right? And I think that's a problem that a lot of thereminists I've spoken to
have is that they spend a lot of time practicing at home, maybe playing to backing
tracks, or tracks that they recorded themselves. Whereas I used to play
electric guitar in alternative bands, and I missed playing with other people.
And I've always liked to be a little bit different, right? Why would we choose
such a difficult and weird instrument if we didn't like being different? So
philosophically, where I like to fit within the group when I'm on theremin is
kind of by bringing different textures to it. I play a Claravox now. I've got
the delayed circuit on it. And it's got the different settings on it, which are
really useful for bringing new textures in. And we do one piece in which people
are playing recorders and stuff to emulate birds. And I like to actually break
the rules and touch the pitch antenna with my fingers to try and make that
chirping sound. Also, the Claravox has the white noise circuit on. I've used
the software app to connect the pitch antenna to the filter. The Claravox has
got that very beautiful Moog filter on it, to try and create kind of a wind
effect. And you put that with some delay. So I can get a lot of textures that
way. And that's really interesting, because when I started playing Ttheremin
seriously, which was only about five years ago, I wanted to kind of get away
from using it as a sound effects machine, which you know there's a little
snobbery within the theremin community used for sound effects, which I kind of
agree with to a point because when you can get melodies out of it they're very
beautiful, but you know, in the orchestra situation, you give what you can, and
I'm playing with other people. And sometimes it's really nice to be able to do
that.
Conall Gleeson
20:38
When we
perform, we've kind of scripted our pieces. But when we get together, and we're
collaborating, we're all improvising, and we're responding to the sounds other
instruments make. So in that respect, it's really exciting then, finding how a
theremin might blend and to add an interesting texture to a guitar drone, or to
get to the theremin to sound like a percussion instrument. When we collaborate
or meet every Tuesday, we're exploring these different ways that a stheremin
might work with the rest of the orchestra.
Rick Reid
22:53
I can
imagine situations where you have to tell Alexx, you know, we don't really need
a theremin in this song.
Conall Gleeson
23:01
That's
part of the flexibility and the genius of Alexx because he can also play the
keyboard. It's never a case that we don't need a theremin. But it's often the
case that we need someone to do some of the synth work. And then that's where
Alexx brings in his expertise as well, because he's so talented. He's got such
a wide range of skills, you know. Got to use them all.
Alexx Mazonowicz 23:19
You
flatter, you flatter me so, Conall. Going back to what you were talking about
actual space. I think in the early days, I set my theremin up when we
rehearsed, actually quite apart from everyone. And I'd be playing and people
would come up and go, Oh, what's that? And, you know, obviously, the pitch
would suddenly change. On stage it's been okay, I sometimes have to tune the
pitch antenna quite tight, just to kind of make sure that nobody else gets into
range. But we're a big group, so we have to have big spaces to play in anyway.
Conall Gleeson
23:54
Ironically,
the theremin takes up a lot of space doesn't it?
Rick Reid
24:00
Also you
have to have an amplifier. So how does that work?
Alexx Mazonowicz 24:04
We've
already got people playing bass guitars and electric guitars and we've got like
rock drummers in there as well. So generally people are kind of fighting the
volume. But Conall does a fantastic job of actually getting people to turn
down. For me, learning to sit back a little bit whether I'm playing theremin or
keyboards, there's been a really big learning experience. actually learning to
step back a bit in the mix. It's been really good. But again, I've got a
Claravox so I can always plug some headphones in. I can monitor the pitch on a
pitch pedal. And I do have a small practice amp, and I'll use that sometimes at
a low volume just to make sure I can hear.
Rick Reid
24:44
Now you
have a show coming up in February called Love Fest. Tell me about that.
Alexx Mazonowicz 24:50
Love
Fest, yeah. Well that's on Valentine's Day and we are playing in a church down
the road with a few other artists from Brighton, but it's an alternative love
show. So it's not just about romantic love. We're talking about brotherly love.
We're talking about lots of different types of love. And we've got some kind of
alternative love poems that we're going to be reading over our normal
repertoire. But yes, an alternative Valentine's evening.
Rick Reid
25:18
Thank
you very much for taking the time to visit with me and I wish you good luck
with the concert coming up. Love is always a good thing. And music is always a
good thing.
Conall Gleeson
25:27
Yeah,
thank you. And I love your show. It's great.
Alexx Mazonowicz 25:30
Yeah,
it's fantastic. Thank you very much for everything you do, Rick.
Rick Reid 25:33
Rick Reid
29:06
David Brower
29:50
