[S07E03] July 2025 - Karen Cecilia and Emilee Lord



In the July 2025 edition of the Theremin 30 podcast, host Rick Reid spins theremin music from Spain, Russia, and Mexico, and he interviews Karen Cecilia and Emilee Lord about their Edinborough Fringe production called "Timestamp."

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

CALENDAR OF THEREMIN EVENTS

MEDIA & NEWS LINKS

SUPPORT THIS PODCAST

CONTACT

CREDITS 

Copyright 2025 Rick Reid 


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TRANSCRIPT

Please note: This transcript was created with the help of speech-to-text AI.  It may contain some errors.

David Brower  0:00  
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  0:18  
Hey there. Welcome to the July 2025, edition of the theremin 30 podcast. I hope you're having a great summer or winter if you live south of the equator. My summer has been rather eventful, so far. I recently fell and fractured one of my fingers. The good news is that it happened to be on my volume hand and not my pitch hand, so I can still play the theremin about as well as I did before the accident. But that reminds me of the old joke where a guy asks his doctor, will I be able to play the violin after the surgery? And the doctor replies, Yes, of course. And the guy says, Great, I never could play it before. Well, I can't hear you, but I suspect you probably aren't laughing at that joke right now, which is fine, because the next half hour will be no laughing matter. I've got some serious new Theremin music from Spain, some new-to-me music from Russia, plus some music from Mexico that you may have missed. And my special guests are Karen Cecilia and Emilee Lord, they'll be performing an original theater piece at Edinburgh Fringe in August, and it involves a Moog Theremini.

Rick Reid  1:35  
Let's start the show now with a track from Paulo Pascual off of his recent four song EP Luces. Then I'll play a rock and anti-war anthem from Selenesphere, from their 2024 album, Moscow Songs, I'll tell you more about both artists On the Other side.

Rick Reid  11:03  
We kicked off the show with a song called Quadrante, or Quadrant in English, by Paolo Pascual from Vigo, Spain. It's from an EP he released in April of this year called Lucws, and it's available as a free download on Bandcamp. Paulo is also part of an ensemble called Modulador de Ondes. I've featured his music on the show a few times, and I interviewed him in the August 2020 episode of Theremin 30. After that, I played In Front of Enemies by Selenesphere. That's from the Moscow Songs album they recorded in Russia and released last November. Moscow Songs features vocalist Julia  Nem and multi-instrumentalist Frankie, who has since relocated to Portugal, where he continues to create music under the Selenesphere, name as a solo artist, to learn more about Paolo Pascual and Selenesphere, and to get their albums, click on their names in this month's show notes at theremin30.com. Frankie plays a very cool see-through Subscope theremin, so be sure to check out the photos on his website. 

Rick Reid  12:06  
It's time now for the theremin 30 calendar of Theremin events. On July 5, Stephen Hamm performs with his Space Family Band in the Vancouver, British Columbia, area. Andrew Levine will perform as part of Duo Luftstrum in central Germany on July 9. Ernesto Mendoza will lead a theremin workshop for beginners and intermediate players on July 12 in Mexico City. Masami Takeuchi will teach a theremin workshop in Hamamatsu City, Japan, on July 18. And on July 26 in the Philadelphia area, The Divine Hand Ensemble will host an album release party. For details about these events and more, visit the calendar page at theremin30.com. And speaking of Ernesto Mendoza, he's been very busy lately. He just published a Spanish-language instruction manual for beginning theremin players called Instrumento Entocable. If I pronounced it correctly. In English, that's UntouchableInstrument. It includes historical information, the basics of how a theremin works, plus practice exercises and links to exclusive instructional videos. For information about how you can get your own copy of Ernesto's manual, Look for the link in this month's show notes at theremin30y.com. Now let's listen to some of Ernesto's music. This track is from his Syntheremin album, and it's called Vimana, which is a Sanskrit word meaning flying chariot. It's from the ancient mythology of India. I kind of think of it as a compact-model flying saucer. 

Rick Reid  16:26  
That was Vimana by Ernesto Mendoza. To learn more about him, click on his name in this month's show notes, or listen to my interview with him in the February 2024, episode of the theremin 30 podcast.

Rick Reid  17:01  
Edinburgh Fringe is a huge live theater festival held in Scotland every summer, and as the name suggests, the performances lean toward the unconventional. This year, two artists from Brooklyn, New York, will take their interactive play to the fest. And I recently visited with musician, playwright Karen Cecilia and dancer, visual artist Emilee Lord to find out about their theremin-infused show called Timestamp. Karen and Emilee, welcome to the Theremin 30 podcast. 

Karen and Emilee  17:29  
Hi. Hi!

Rick Reid  17:30  
Let's start with Karen on the big picture thing here. What is Edinburgh Fringe?

Karen Cecilia  17:35  
It is, I would say the biggest Louisville Fringe Festival. People come from all over the world. Almost every country is represented. It takes over the entire city for three weeks. There is works of dance, theater, comedy, music, stand up and you can see a show every hour on the hour almost. It's really one of a kind experience.

Rick Reid  18:01  
Emilee, what makes it fringe? What does that word have to do with it? 

Emilee Lord  18:05  
I think it's on the fringe, on the edges. So there's big names coming in to perform, but there's also kind of everybody throwing their work into the ring, I think, and asking to be seen in this space. It's very accessible in that way. 

Rick Reid  18:19  
And also, does fringe have to do with it being experimental in nature?

Karen Cecilia  18:24  
Yeah, I think it does. I think fringe allows it to take risks with what is shown there, where it's, you know, not maybe in the commercial theater, but unconventional performances.

Rick Reid  18:37  
The two of you have a show you're doing at the fringe this year called Timestamp. Tell me how that got started.

Emilee Lord  18:43  
What is the origin we remember, we were just having conversations about working aspects of, yeah, working together in the aspect of who we are as performers and makers. And started working into thinking about improvising something together, devising a piece together, that it sort of grew by virtue of us working on it. Then the theme emerged because we were talking about like, well, who, who are we right now? What do we have to say from our personal self, and how do we put that on stage together? 

Karen Cecilia  19:12  
Yeah, and I think also we were both in conversation and and in agreement, and kind of clicked right away that we wanted to try a different form of theater that we wanted to see just where it went if we devised something. So that was really the origins of it.

Rick Reid  19:30  
Karen, how would you give your elevator speech about what timestamp is? 

Karen Cecilia  19:34  
Well, Timestamp is really it's a dialog between movement and sound. The show we use co-authored text me and Emilee. We break down expectations between ourselves, between society, and we actually ask the audience to consider their own expectations, and we incorporate that into the show. So every night's performance. Is actually unique in that we don't know how the audience is going to what they're going to give us, as far as their own expectations that they've either been challenged with, or if they've overcome them.

Emilee Lord  20:12  
It is scripted, so we've written our dialog and our monolog for the piece. The thing that is emergent each night is how we interact, how I how the cerumin and my dance interacts, and how we take the thoughts and feelings the audience chooses to give us and incorporate it. So there's a rote structure that we improvise sections into. 

Rick Reid  20:34  
How does the audience participate in the improvised portion of the performance? 

Emilee Lord  20:41  
So at the beginning of the show, they're asked, they're given little forms to fill out. I have a question about what expectations placed on them, from society or from themselves? Do they want to divest themselves up? Do they want to move past and so they fill out this little form and hand it to us. And then in several sections, there's kind of a ritual. Karen reads through these, and I interpret them, and then we place them in a bowl of water. And kind of work, I think, to ritualize the release of those things, because we're really talking about moving away from the scripted approach to life, like when what you need to do by what age and how you need to be, what you need to have. So all of it is kind of a release of that those ideas, their words, become a section of the script each night.

Rick Reid  21:32  
I imagine that leads to some surprising performances where afterwards you're going, what did, what did, what just happened?

Emilee Lord  21:40  
Yeah, there's some moments where it feels funny, like we're working through some things, and in rehearsal the other day, it got really goofy and like mime, like, just because you're sort of playing with what else the body can do and sound can do to express and unpack this idea of what people are trying to resist in societal expectations, or gender role expectations and those kinds of things. So it feels really serious and it feels really touching and fearful sometimes, and then it also falls apart and ends in laughter in some places as well.

Rick Reid  22:17  
You're playing a Moog Theremini. How did that instrument become part of the show?

Karen Cecilia  22:22  
I wanted to really use it in this show. From the get go. It's such a unique instrument, as you know, and I've been in shows before with it, and I really felt like it lends itself with that kind of ethereal sound that it has to the idea of the expectations and the intangible, or are they things that we grasp? It has that feel and the way Emilee's dance vocabulary moves. It mimics the way that I move, or rather, I mimic the way that she moves when I'm playing. So it really lends itself to this type of work very easily and seamlessly.

Rick Reid  23:07  
Emilee, in your dance choreography, are you communicating with the music or maybe giving Karen clues about what she should do next?

Emilee Lord  23:16  
Well, yes, and no, we've been doing this together long enough that I don't maybe in the beginning we were sort of like, okay, I'm gonna follow you for a minute, and then you follow me, and let's see what emerges. But that was the building process, and now I feel like we're really settled into each other's phrasing and ideas around it. One of the things that was interesting when putting together some of the set choreography was to look at how Karen has to move to play the instrument, which is a very specific physicality. So then a lot of my choreography became arms raised and gestures in the air in front of me and around my head, so it informed my movement and kind of forced me to create phrasing in a different way than I had before, because of the atmospheric nature of the instrument.

Rick Reid  24:05  
And Emilee, have you ever had an opportunity to play Karen Theremini?

Emilee Lord  24:09  
I haven't. Actually, that's a good question. One of the things that was fun to discover when we were first building the piece is that if I dance really close to her, it sort of disrupts something. So I was playing at one point with how my proximity could affect her sound. And then we moved quickly away from that, because I had other things I wanted to discover.

Rick Reid  24:30  
Karen, the Theremini has got some great and some weird and wonderful presets. Are you using some of the presets for the show?

Karen Cecilia  24:36  
Yeah, I have my go-tos that I kind of use for any kind of work that I do with the theremin. But yeah, I'm using, I would say four that I'm definitely using every time I rehearse. I think I try in a different one. Some of them, you know, are, as you said, a little out there, and not really the right feel. But I also use a pedal, and that really adds, to - That's my secret sauce that really adds to the...

Rick Reid  25:07  
Can you reveal the secret of which pedal it is? OR do you just have to go to this show and find out?

Karen Cecilia  25:15  
Well, even then I I do keep it behind the speaker so that it's not really seen. I would just give the hint for those people who are pedal people, that it's a certain color, the name like pedal is based off of the color. That's a big clue.

Rick Reid  25:33  
I'll have to do some research. Is there any pre-recorded audio in addition to your live performance?

Karen Cecilia  25:41  
There's not for the music. There is pre-recorded audio of women speaking sound bites from them, but not from not for me, it's all it's all live and on the spot. So you know, with that, anything can happen.

Rick Reid  25:56  
One practical question that comes up from theremin players that I've known traveling with a theremin. Have you run into any issues or thought about how you're going to get your theremin through security at the airport and all that?

Karen Cecilia  26:09  
Oh, I've done this. I'm a pro at it. So my advice to the other theremin players are obviously you'd put it in your carry-on bag, because you would, I would never trust them to throw that on a belt and throw it into the base of a plane. I wrap it thoroughly and put it on top, because you do have to unwrap it and put it through the X-ray machine. And I tell them, in advance, I have a synthesizer instrument. It's very fragile. I will take it out, I will lay it down. And their response is, what type of instrument? I just kind of keep it simple too. It's a synthesizer.

Rick Reid  26:49  
Thank you so much for taking the time to tell us about your show Timestamp. And I forgot to ask, what does the title mean?

Karen Cecilia  26:56  
Timestamps are moments in life that are so significant that there's stamps in your psyche and your being, and that's, I think, where the title stems from.

Rick Reid  27:09  
Timestamp will be on stage from August 1 through the 23rd at Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh, Scotland. For ticket information, look for the link in this month's show notes.

Rick Reid  27:28  
To finish this half hour. Here's a little taste of Timestamp. This track is called Four Pillars.

Rick Reid  29:16  
Thanks so much to Paulo Pascual, Selenesphere, and Ernesto Mendoza for allowing me to play their music, and a special thanks to my guests, Karen Cecilia and Emilee Lord of Timestamp. Please support these artists by purchasing their music and attending their shows. If you'd like to support this show, visit theremin30.com and look for the tip jar or shop in the merch store and the pro shop. Until next time, I'm your host, Rick Reid, and I'll see you again somewhere in the ether.

David Brower  29:47  
You've been listening to the Theremin 30 podcast. Visit Theremin 30 on the web at Theremin three zero dot com.

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