Showing posts with label Andrew Levine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Andrew Levine. Show all posts

[S05E05] November 2023 - Andrew Levine

(photo credit: © 2022 Nuno Martins)


The November 2023 episode of the Theremin 30 podcast features ambient, experimental, and improvisational music from the USA, England, Australia, Portugal, and Germany. Host Rick Reid interviews Andrew Levine about his recent album Quadruple Quadrature Questions. (photo credit: © 2022 Nuno Martins)

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 LINKS

SUPPORT THIS PODCAST

CONTACT

CREDITS 

Copyright 2023 Rick Reid 


--------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT

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

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

Rick Reid  0:19  
Hey, welcome to the November 2023 episode of the Theremin 30 podcast. For the next half hour I've got some new and not so new Theremin music from around the globe. I think we can all agree that the Theramin is an unconventional instrument that can be used to play conventional music. On past episodes, we've heard jazz, pop, rock, classical and other familiar styles. This time around though, I'm going to feature some unconventional music, ambient, experimental and improvisational performances that take the theorem and in some interesting and unusual directions. We'll hear recordings by Eric Ross, Chris Conway and Peter Whitehouse, and My special guest this month is Andrew Levine from Hamburg, Germany. He has several new albums out and we'll be talking about how he recorded one of them during his concert tour of Portugal earlier this year. And I do want to mention up front that the music selections for this episode were a bit too long to neatly fit in the 30 minute format of the show. So I'll be playing excerpts from the full length recordings. To get our Sonic journey started. Let's go back to the future from the 2014 Eric Ross album Music from the future here is a track called Pluto's court.

We started the show with a track called Pluto's cord from the 2014 Eric Ross album Music from the future for Theramin and ensemble. If you aren't familiar with Eric, be sure to check out my interview with him and the June 2019 episode of Theremin 30. After that, I played Theremin immersion a brand new track from Chris Conway. It's from his Theremin ocean dreams album, which is actually a stripped down reworking of his deep ocean dreams album. Chris edited a single version exclusively for this podcast. After the break, I've got the Theremin 30 calendar of events and another dreamy experimental Theremin performance from Peter Whitehouse. Then later in the show. I'll interview Andrew Levine about his new album quadruple quadrature questions. So stay tuned.

It's time now for a look at that Theremin 30 calendar of Theremin events. On Thursday, November 23. Charlotte Dubois has a concert in Turku of France on Saturday, November 25. The radio science orchestra performs at the National Space Centre in Leicester, England. On Sunday, the 26th supernormal are onstage in Portland, Maine, USA. On December 2, Torvalds. Jorgensen performs with the castle state orchestra in Kassel, Germany. It's the first of several concerts they're featuring film score music. On December 16. Miss Terry performs holiday music with organist Yan Willem doctor in our house Germany, and on December 17, electric storks are performing and Rotterdam, Netherlands. For details about these events and many more, check out the interactive calendar on Theramin thirty.com. If you have a Theramin related event you'd like me to list on the calendar send me a note with all the details you can reach me with the contact form on the Theremin 30 website. Peter White House of Brisbane Australia is a relative newcomer to that Theremin. But he has already shared some really interesting experimental recordings on his SoundCloud page. Here's an ambient drone piece he calls stretched cacophony.

That was stretched cacophony by Peter Whitehouse. You can find more of his experimental Theramin recordings on SoundCloud under his username Wanko 42. Right after this break, I chat with Andrew Levine. So stay right where you are.

Andrew Levine is an experimental electronic recording artists based in Hamburg, Germany. He has at least six albums out this year, including one called quadruple quadrature questions. I caught up with Andrew a few weeks ago to ask a few questions of my own. Andrew Levine, thank you so much for being on the Theremin 30 podcast.

Andrew Levine  16:05  
Yeah, thanks for the invitation. Rick, I'm happy to be here.

Rick Reid  16:09  
You have some of the most interesting and different music than I've ever played on the show. I don't know if you'd call it new music or experimental. What's the word you give for that style of music you play? Well, I

Andrew Levine  16:20  
usually say free improvised music, but there is actually so many potential names for that. The first one, actually talking about this kind of music was Karlheinz Stockhausen. And he called it intuitive music.

Rick Reid  16:37  
What does that mean to you?

Andrew Levine  16:38  
Well, it means to me that basically you go into a concert or a recording session with like, no preconceived ideas. The only thing you will definitely talk about his how long you're going to be playing. And maybe who was going to start, but sometimes even that is not defined.

Rick Reid  16:55  
There are no rules other than the length of the performance. 

Andrew Levine  16:59  
Yeah, there are really no rules, you would listen to what is happening, good listen to what happens when you try to play the instrument. I mean, we all know the Theramin. So especially if you try to use the full range, so maybe like five or six octaves or something, then the techniques that are developed for what I call Theramin plus, so just using the Thurman to determine the pitch and using my other hand to mix different cameras in real time, you don't really know what you're going to be getting. I mean, you know, this is going to be a high note, this is going to be a low note, this is going to be somewhere in between. But depending on which Thurman you play, is the ether wave. Or is it the Clara Vox which is quite linear,

Rick Reid  17:46  
you play the open Theremin to you. 

Andrew Levine  17:49  
Yeah, I play the open Theremin. And that's actually really nice for for traveling because it's really small as everyone else. And it's quite a good Theramin. And the calibration function works well, although sometimes it drifts. But with this kind of music, you can basically also depend a bit on what you get from the instrument. The thing is, if you try to listen to what is happening with your fellow musicians, and if you just like see what you get from the instrument, you're going to find, hopefully, find the direction that you want to move in and then you just take that direction, and then possibly you pick up something that here somewhere else or you're contrasted, you try to develop a small melody just because you feel like it, you might quote something I mean, why not? You just try to keep an open mind and see where the music will take you

Rick Reid  18:44  
Did you start out with more traditional mainstream music education?

Andrew Levine  18:48  
Yeah, so I've been playing the violin since I was about six years of age. And then at some point, I started singing. And when I was about 1718, I spent one year in the United States on a scholarship in McLean, Virginia, I went to school with like a lot of music possibilities, and I wasn't a choir and in an orchestra and choir was just like so much easier. You don't have to practice on like, nobody expects a singer to train for six hours a day. And that's the normal time you have to spend playing the violin. So I gradually drifted from violent towards singing then I started taking singing lessons and enjoy that very much. And when I came across a Thurman and it came, like across my path several times, watching some YouTube videos, something and in 2010 I decided to just go ahead and buy one and I got the ether wave plus because I thought well has this interesting possibility of also taking out control voltages and using that for something I didn't have any idea what it was about, actually, at that point, but I thought really cute my options open. And the moment I set up the Thurman the moment it had, like warmed up and and was able to do something I realized why it made sense to have studied violin that long and have studied boys because it's like so close, you have to be able to correct quickly when you're like slightly off or more than slightly off. And you have to praise in a way that it's like a vocal ease, like when you're singing. So all of these things helped me but of course, I still came from a background of written music. So you have a sheet of music, and you can read it and you can just play with a violin, you can sing it, whatever. 

Rick Reid  20:39  
Now you've had a really busy year, you did a tour of Portugal and recorded several performances and put that out as an album. You've got a new album out quad, Dre. 

Andrew Levine  20:50  
It's quadruple quad what your questions.

Rick Reid  20:54  
And what is that title mean? 

Andrew Levine  20:57  
Well, we have four people asking all kinds of questions. And we were like set up in kind of like, square shaped arrangement. And stuff was just like bouncing around from one to the other. And I just had this idea that oh, this sounds like a crazy title for the crazy music that is like behind that.

Rick Reid  21:21  
Now was this recorded in a studio? 

Andrew Levine  21:25  
Yeah, I was in Lisbon, the end of April. So I did like some solo concerts. And then I went to Porto, for one I came back to Lisbon. And Ernesto, the alto player picked me up on May 1, which was actually not that easy, because there was a demonstration going on in the middle of town. And he got out of his car and waved at me and I saw Rocky, that must be the guys. So there was two of us AirMesh to go to Vegas, the alto player and Hulu Pena, he plays bass clarinet. And we drove for a while to a small studio outside of Lisbon that is owned by flax, and he's a guitar player who comes from the rock music. But he's grown tired of rock music and is very much interested in trying something new and finding new things and working with the experimental music scene here and he has a small studio, which is quite cramped.

Rick Reid  22:24  
And then you have more than just your Theremin in your corner of the room.

Andrew Levine  22:29  
This was a more reduced set because I was flying. I took the open Thurman, I took small modular rig, because the open Thurman has these beautiful control voltage outputs. So you can do a lot of stuff with that. And I took the stereo field, I took a cracker box. And I took the Zoma pipe microphone. On this trip,

Rick Reid  22:49  
the stereo field, it's got like circles with metal contacts that you touch with your fingers.

Andrew Levine  22:55  
It's actually like a crackerbox, a double crackerbox and steroids. More or less.

Rick Reid  23:01  
We'll have to have listeners look up a cracker box. Yeah. And that's something that Yeah, well defies definition, probably.

Andrew Levine  23:07  
Yeah, it's actually the first circuit bending instrument, which was developed in the 1970s. And you have these six touch plates that you can connect with your fingers. And basically you become part of the circuit. So I really like that disparity between Thurman where you don't touch, and the cracker box and the stereo field where you do touch because if you don't, there is like nothing happening. And you can use the stereo field to make all kinds of crazy noises. But you can also use it to create control voltages. You can also use it to process audio. It's an amazing instrument.

Rick Reid  23:49  
Do you use hand signals? Or is there any other way that you can communicate with the fellow musicians while you're recording and while you're performing?

Andrew Levine  23:57  
Well, mostly you just listen very, very attentively to what's going on. Because that's also an indicator if you like being too loud, I mean, you you're supposed to be able to listen to everything that's happening. So en esto he plays like very, very gentle stuff on his alto. So he's like fiddling along, or like I don't know, we're using the word from his bowl to make like very, very soft sounds. And then there is Bruno. He's making louder or softer sounds with the bass clarinet. And then there's the electronics coming in from flax, and you basically listening to everything and that's actually the best connection because you can listen 360 degrees, you can hear everything that's going on around the view. Whereas if you look someplace, you can only like connect to one or two people that are standing where you're looking, 

Rick Reid  24:52  
and how can people listen to your album or better yet, buy it. 

Andrew Levine  24:55  
It's available now on Bandcamp of course, but also on Apple Music iTunes, Amazon mp3 I mean you can get this album, quadrupled quadrature questions you can find that basically everywhere right now

Rick Reid  25:09  
to wrap up this episode of experimental Theremin music here's an extended excerpt from quadruple quadrature questions this track is called Dream of the Bumblebee you can hear the full length version of this track on Bandcamp.

Thank you so much for joining me once again on Theremin 30 And thanks to this episode's featured artists Eric Ross, Chris Conway, Peter Whitehouse and my special guest Andrew Levine. Be sure to click on their name links and this month's show notes. And as always a special thanks to the listeners who support this podcast with small one time or monthly donations. Until next time, I'm your host Rick Reid. I'll see you again soon somewhere in the ether.

David Brower  29:48  
You've been listening to the theorem 30 podcast visit Theremin 30 on the web at Theremin 30 dot com.
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[S05E02] August 2023 - Kip Rosser (part 2)




In the August 2023 episode of the Theremin 30 podcast, host Rick Reid continues his conversation with Kip Rosser that began in the March 2023 episode. Featured music includes recordings by Tharsis Project, Andrew Levine, Paulo Pascual, and Kip Rosser.

FEATURED MUSIC*

  • "Prototype" - Tharsis Project: Ernesto Mendoza and Jon Carr (Mexico City, Mexico)
  • "Live at Cosmos Lisboa" [excerpt] - Andrew Levine (Hamburg, Germany)
  • Selections from "Negro Púrpura" - Paulo Pascual (Vigo, Spain) 
  • Theme from "Idle Hands are the Devil's Playground" - Kip Rosser (Morrisville, Pennsylvania, USA)

*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 LINKS

SUPPORT THIS PODCAST

CONTACT

CREDITS 

Copyright 2023 Rick Reid 


--------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT

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

David Brower  00:04

This is "Theremin 30," thirty minutes of theremin music, news, events and interviews, with a new episode about every 30 days. Now, here is your host from Denver, Colorado, USA -- Rick Reid!

Rick Reid  00:19

This is the August 2023 episode of the Theremin 30 podcast and the second episode of season five. I took a bit of a break since the last episode I got caught up in my freelance work projects and some health issues, including some weird problems with my voice. But I'm sounding more like myself now. So if you're ready to listen to me, I believe I'm ready to talk. In this episode, I have Theremin music from Tharsis project Andrew Levine, Paolo Pascual and my interview guest Kip Rosser. I had Kip on the show back in March to talk about the Juliet Shaw legacy project, but you only heard about half of the conversation. So this month, I'm going to play the rest of that interview, as Kip talks about his own musical adventures. 

To get things going. Here is the second single from Tharsis project, a collaboration between John Carr and Ernesto Mendoza, with a track called "Prototype." 

Rick Reid

We started the episode with "Prototype by Tharsis project. After that we heard an exclusive edit from the new live experimental album "Andrew Levine Live in Portugal." This track recorded may 3 of this year at Cosmos in the Campolide neighborhood of Lisbon features Andrew on Theremin and electronics with Jose Bruno Purina on bass, and Ernesto Rodriguez on Viola. The full track and the entire album are available on Bandcamp. Click on Andrew's name in the show notes at Theremin30.com. 

After the break, I've got that Theremin 30 calendar of events and film music from Paulo Pascual. And later in the show I'll visit with Kip Rosser so stay tuned.

Rick Reid

It's time now for a look at the Theremin 30 calendar of Theremin events. On August 3 Andrew Levine joins organist Michael Von Hinsenstern for a classical recital in Bat Berka, Germany. Also on August 3, Marla Goodman celebrates the opening of her Theremin-themed art exhibit in Billings, Montana, with a live performance. Then on August fourth, there will be an artist reception and Theremin demos. To learn more about her wonderful theremin artwork, look for the link in this month's show notes. Both August 15 and August 27 are recognized as the birthday of Professor Leon Theramin. Why two birthdays? Well, it has to do with the Russia switching calendar systems a long, long time ago. But that gives us two days to celebrate. So I'm not complaining. For details about these events and many more, check out the interactive calendar on Theremin30.com. If you have a theremin event you'd like me to list on the calendar, send me a note with all the details. You can reach me with the contact form on the Theremin 30 website. And lately I've been a bit lax about finding events to add to the calendar so do help me out by sending me information about your concerts, workshops and other Theremin-related activities. 

"Negro Purpura" or black purple is a Spanish historical documentary that looks at how hallucinogenic fungus was cultivated by farmers in Galicia. The 2021 film directed by Sabela Iglesias and Adriana Villa Nueva has been playing at festivals in Europe this year. Paolo Pascual of Vigo, Spain, created the music for the film, and he sent me some cues to play on the show. Maybe it isn't obvious, but I don't speak Galician particularly well, so I'll give the English titles. First we'll hear "the magic of fungus" followed by "lights in the River."

Rick Reid

That was music by Paulo Pascual from the soundtrack of the documentary film Negro Purpura or black purple. It's a movie about the history of the hallucinogenic fungus that grows on grain in the Galicia region of Northwest Spain. You can watch the film's trailer featuring Paulo Pascual's music on the Theremin 30 YouTube playlist.

Coming up after this break go visit with American thereminist Kip Rosser, so stay right here. 

Rick Reid

I interviewed Kip Rosser earlier this year about the Juliette Shaw Legacy Project. Because we were talking about Juliette Shaw, I didn't have time in the show to share parts of our conversation about his own career as a thereminist. So I'm going to fix that right now. Kip Rosser. Thanks so much for joining us on that Theremin 30 podcast. 

Kip Rosser  18:04

You're very welcome. Happy to be here.

Rick Reid  18:06

You are involved in theremins in lots of different ways. So give me a little brief introduction of your history of Theremining.

Kip Rosser  18:15

I started playing in 1996. And it was a complete fluke. There was a radio station in East Orange New Jersey called WFMU. At that time, they were wild. You never knew what you were going to hear. And they used to put out a catalog called Weird Stuff every year. One year, I got the catalog. And on the bottom right-hand corner was a little, tiny ad that advertised a theremin kit that you could buy. It was 150 bucks back then. It was by Paia, the Paia Thermax. And I had no idea that Moog was still making theremins, that there was an entire theremin community out there. I just knew what a theremin was. So I bought the kit, put it together. And for seven months that's the theremin that I used. After that I realized I could have bought one put together, and I got a Moog. But it wasn't called Moog at the time. It was called Big Briar. It  was a Big Briar Etherwave. And that was really the transition point. Because playing that instrument was completely different. I had to basically relearn how to play the theremin. It was more stable, it was more accurate, I could get a lot more done with it. So I started in 1996. And from there I just practiced for two years before allowing myself to play in public at all.

Rick Reid

You've played with orchestras and...  

Kip Rosser

I've never played with an orchestra I would love to. That's one of my fantasies. But there are a lot of people who have played with orchestras, but I never have. I've played with live musicians on various occasions. Rarely. There was a time when I had a wonderful jazz and classical pianist that I play with regularly. She and I played for years, but she moved away. I played with a concert pianist from San Francisco and one of my CDs is him and myself in 2005. He and I put on the show at the New York International Film Festival called "The Unholy Secrets of the Theremin." One Sunday afternoon in 2005, while we were on stage Bob Moog died. While I was playing his Etherwave Pro. I never met Bob Moog, but I did speak to him on the telephone one time, and he yelled at me. He yelled at me because it was my first public theremin performance, was done on Cape Cod, and very odd wiring, and the theremin wouldn't function no matter what. So I called Moog Music. And Bob Moog answered the telephone. This was around 1998-1999. And we talked a little bit, and he told me I could get a deep cycle marine cell, which is like a car battery to hook up to a power inverter and power the Theremin off of that, which I did, was very expensive at the time, like $200 for a deep cycle marine cell. And he asked me, "How long have you been playing the Theremin?" I said "two years, and it's my first public performance." And he hit the roof. He started screaming at me that Clara Rockmore and Lydia Kavina practiced six and a half hours a day every day for six years before they dared to play in public." And I couldn't believe that. Bob Moog was yelling at me. That was the only time, my only conversation with him at all. He chewed me out for not going for another four years before coming out to play. I always watched interviews with him. I always wanted to meet him. I wish he could have heard me play. I have no animosity towards him at all for yelling at me. It was just his mood that day. I thought it was hilarious. Bob Moog is laughing at me and yelling at me. It was really funny. 

Rick Reid  21:42

You've done some movie soundtrack work, haven't you?

Kip Rosser  21:45

Lydia Kavina, Charles Lester, a couple of other people have played for film scores out of Hollywood. And I've only done one Theremin score. I wrote the score for an independent film by Michael Jason Allen called "An Idle Mind is the Devil's Playground." You can see it on Prime I believe. You can also see it on Tubi. It's a film that's only about an hour long because he knew he didn't want to try to sustain it for longer. It's in beautiful black and white. The cinematography is amazing. And it's sort of his homage to a Twilight Zone. He found me on ReverbNation and contacted me and asked me if I would be willing to write the score for his film. And I said, Sure. So I did. There was another very, very short film by a director named Sabina Ptasznik. She asked me to write a score for Theremin music is more properly, I would call it sound effects for her movie called Gravity. It was also a filmmaker. Her name at that time was Toddy Burton. It was about a 15 minute film. The film composer contacted me and asked him if I would play the Theremin parts in his score. So I was able to do that as well. Those are the only film experiences that I've ever had.

Rick Reid  22:58

Most people know you from your YouTube videos. Tell people about that, who maybe haven't seen them.

Kip Rosser  23:03

Since 2011, apart from the music videos which I occasionally put up, my real focus was putting up tutorials. Starting in 2011, till just last year, I have made theremin tutorials, which to me was the only thing that I thought was really worth putting up. It felt like a contribution. Playing music, you see tons of theremin videos, people playing music, and there are some wonderfully amazingly talented Thereminists out there now. I would argue that there are more theremin players in the world now than there ever have been, ever. I put up these tutorials because I thought this is what I can really contribute. At the time that I started I never knew that there were things online. When I got the Etherwave, it came with a VHS tape of Lydia Kavina's Mastering the Theremin. It changed a little bit about the way I started playing. But my vision for what I wanted to play was always far exceeding my technical abilities. So when I began learning to try to play Bach and Dvorak and things like that, I had to develop techniques that I've never seen before in order to play them. So the evolution of my techniques is what I put up there. I developed techniques that quite honestly, I've never seen anyone do. I've never seen anyone deal with various aspects of the Theremin. So I decided to put up things that I thought it would really help. But then people started texting me or emailing me about the Theremini and how they were having trouble calibrating it. And that inspired an entire Theremini course. 

Rick Reid  24:43

Do you teach Theremin?

Kip Rosser  24:45

Sure.

Rick Reid  24:46

In person in Pennsylvania or online or...

 

Kip Rosser  24:49

Until COVID I could teach occasionally in person. Then COVID happened.

 

Rick Reid  24:55

So I guess now you're teaching more safely over the web.

 

Kip Rosser  24:59

It was actually my son that inspired me to do it. He asked me how come I've never taught online? And there really wasn't any reason why I couldn't. So I created a website just called ThereminLessons.com. People can go there and book a lesson. You look it up by selecting your date on a calendar, and it takes you to PayPal. I get notification. I always respond personally, and we work it out from there. I'd like to find out what model of theremin people are playing, how long they've been playing, do they play any other instruments. All of it helps me to understand where it is they're at and what types of things that we can work on when we're together. And it's great because you can do a lesson halfway across the world. It's fabulous.

Rick Reid  25:44

Let's finish the show now with some movie music by Kip Rosser. Here is the title theme from An Idle Mind is the Devil's Playground, a 2016 indie feature film directed by Michael Jason Allen.

Rick Reid 

That was Kip Rosser with the theme from An Idle Mind is the Devil's Playground. You can learn more about Kip by following the link in this month's show notes.

Thanks so much for joining me for another 30-minute trip into the ether. And thanks to Tharsis Project, Andrew Levine, Paulo Pascual, and Kip Rosser for providing the tunes. Also, thanks to Kip Rosser for sharing stories about his Theremin adventures. I've already started planning the next episode of the Theremin 30 podcast, but I have some room for more music. So if you have professional quality, original theremin music that's either your own composition or in the Public Domain, I'd love to share it with listeners around the world. So contact me through the website. Also please tell your friends about this show and share links to it on social media. You can also rate and review Theremin 30 on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher to help me get the word out. Until next time, I'm your host Rick Reid and I'll see you in the ether.

David Brower  29:47

You've been listening to the Theremin 30 podcast. Visit Theremin 30 on the web at Theremin30.com.
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[S01E09] December 2019 - Dorit Chrysler



The December 2019 episode of the Theremin 30 podcast features music from Colombia, Canada, USA, and Germany. Rick Reid's interview guest is Dorit Chrysler of the New York Theremin Society. 


FEATURED MUSIC*

"Las Calaveras" - AmaNRouge featuring Etheremick (Bogotá, Colombia)
"Time To Talk Time" - Dr G (Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada)
"We Don't Want It" - Darth Presley (New Bedford, MA, USA)
"#1" - Gramss/Krennerich/Levine (Hamburg, Germany)

ADDITIONAL MUSIC

"Under the Milky Way" - Tears of Sirens (Bari, Italy)
"Etherwave Blues" - Ian Bickerstaff (UK)
"I'm Your Satellite" - Hyperbubble (San Antonio, TX, USA)
"Sputnik Crash" (short version) - Therminal C (Lausanne, Switzerland)
"Opera Glasses" - Phlogiston Theory and Ron Allen (Denver, CO and Seattle, WA, USA)
"Time Shadows" - Phlogiston Theory (Denver, CO, USA)
"No Static at All" - Phlogiston Theory (Denver, CO, USA)

INTERVIEW

Dorit Chrysler of the New York Theremin Society, producer of the Theremin 100 compilation album.

FEATURED ALBUM

Theremin 100: Electronic Music Written For Theremin


 CALENDAR OF THEREMIN EVENTS

Visit the Theremin 30 Calendar of Theremin Events for links and details of events mentioned in this episode.

ON YOUTUBE

Theremin 30 Playlist


Submit your music, suggest a calendar event, or volunteer for an interview by writing to: theremin30podcast@gmail.com. Visit Theremin 30 on Facebook.

Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theremin30/message

*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.

CREDITS

Producer/Writer/Host: Rick Reid
Opening and closing announcer: David Brower

Copyright 2019 Rick Reid

--------------------
TRANSCRIPT

Please note: This is a machine-generated transcript that has not been manually edited. There will be numerous errors. Check back soon for a corrected version.

David Brower  0:04  
This is Theremin 3030 minutes of Theremin music news events and interviews with a new episode about every 30 days. Now here's your host from Denver, Colorado, USA, Rick Reid.

Rick Reid  0:19  
Hello and welcome to the only regularly scheduled podcast devoted to Theremin music. This is the ninth and final episode for 2019. I want to thank all of you who have been listening since the beginning last April. And to those who have tuned in for the first time, I encourage you to go back and listen to all of the previous episodes. You'll find lots of interesting music and interviews that I'm sure you'll enjoy. This month's lineup includes music from Columbia, Canada, the USA and Germany. And my special guest is Dorit Chrysler from the New York Theremin society. She has details for us on the new Theremin 100 compilation album. Let's get started with music from Amman rouge from Bogota, Colombia. I'm on rouge features Amanda lucea Rodriguez on vocals and piano with at keramik on Theremin this track last Coronavirus or the skulls is inspired by a children's folk song of the same name


Rick Reid  8:59  
You just heard time to talk time by Nova Scotia Canada based recording artist and science educator, Greg Dr. g. Melton. It's from the album Dr. g goes to space. Greg tells me the song was inspired by Stephen Hawking's book A Brief History of time. Before that I played last Calaveras new song by Amman rouge that will be featured on their forthcoming album, The crow in the hat. Look for it early next year. You can learn more about these artists by clicking their names in the show notes for this episode at Theremin thirty.com It's Time now for a look at the Theremin 30 calendar of Theremin events with concerts you can see over the next few weeks. On Thursday, December 5 Temple of ape collective featuring thereminist alien Adler will be filming a live performance in Austin, Texas. On December 7 Karolina Ike will play the first of four shows in China. Robert Myers electric Bach project will be performing in Germany on December 13. Spanish trio my doula door down desk says A couple of performances scheduled for December 21. And the CIO marching band rings in the new year here in Denver, Colorado, with their annual Saturnalia concert on December 31. For details on these shows and more, go to Theremin thirty.com and click the link to the calendar.

Up next I've got a sort of a spacey loungy experimental slow rock jam from a man called Darth Presley. It features James Bond on Theremin and some other instruments. Here is we don't want it

After the break I'll visit with Dorit Chrysler from the New York Theremin society about the soon to be released Theremin 100 compilation album. We'll also hear a preview of some of the tracks included. And we've got improvisational music from Andrew Levine so stay tuned.

just over a year ago, some Theremin Hassan Facebook started a grassroots effort to create a new Theremin compilation album to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Theremin. Now that project is about to come to fruition with the help of Dorit Chrysler and the New York Theremin society. I recently spoke with Dora about this really cool project tore it. Thank you for being on Theremin 30. I'm really excited for this new album that you've been working on.

Dorit Chrysler  16:30  
Well, thanks for having me. great pleasure to be here.

Rick Reid  16:33  
This project, if I recall correctly started more than a year ago. I think maybe Robert Meyer, got it going?

Dorit Chrysler  16:39  
You absolutely correct. So Robert Maya online posted publicly for the centennial of the chairman, which we're all excited about, to maybe collect a bunch of tracks online. When I saw that, I thought it's a great idea. But it would be even better if we would take this further. So the New York fairman society decided to make its first release not only as a digital, but also in CD form, and vinyl. So it can really be a lasting product that people can hold in their hands. There was an official call of feminists who wanted to participate, and there was an overwhelming response. And then it came down to the very difficult task of making a selection and lovingly putting it together in a form that really for me, it was important to demonstrate the versatility of the instrument that Theremin has to offer in terms of style and innovative application of the instrument. And of course, also mastering of technique. We had wonderful contributions.

Rick Reid  17:58  
I noticed also there's a variety of instruments involve several different models and custom made instruments, all kinds of things.

Dorit Chrysler  18:05  
It is interesting to see how varied instruments are and there are a few tracks that have actually also been created using exclusively nothing but different Theremin models, as for instance, a band from Texas called hyper bubble, which you know, those are really interesting tracks to listen to.

Rick Reid  18:25  
I should mention that there's a CD and an LP, plus a bunch of bonus tracks that there just wasn't enough room to feature everybody.

Dorit Chrysler 18:31  
Yes, I mean, I really was reminded again of the limitation of vinyl and CD, we could only fit 21 tracks on the CD and 12 tracks on the vinyl altogether. It is 51 tracks spanning 18 countries and 51 different players

Rick Reid  18:51  
and you have really wonderful album artwork. Tell me about how that came together.

Dorit Chrysler 18:56  
I'm really glad you like it. It was I mean the whole project is a true labor of love and passion for the firemen and I tapped into all the friends whose artistry I greatly respect and as for the visuals, it was a dear friend of mine, Larry seven who actually introduced me to the Theremin. So he has been really instrumental to my artistic development. He also is a wonderful photographer. So he had the idea of this elaborate project of finding a huge piece of foam cutting it in the shape of one of the original Thurman's smearing chocolate icing on top of it and turn it into a beautiful Theremin birthday cake where the antennas a burning candle. And then on the backside The cake is cut open and all kinds of old circuitry is stuck inside. So yeah, the art came out really, really nice and because of that we splurged on how a poster of that birthday cake in the limited vinyl edition. So the vinyl comes with a beautiful foreword by Albert klinsky that he generously contributed as well as the poster of the artwork. And the download card in the vinyl edition will feature all the CD tracks plus the bonus tracks. So actually purchasing the CD or vinyl you get the same amount of additional digital downloads.

Rick Reid  20:29  
Let's listen to some of the music. Here's a little montage I put together with for 22nd segments of some of the artists featured.


Rick Reid  21:58  
The first track was from under the Milky Way a song by tears of sirens. Then we heard either way blues from Ian Bickerstaff. I'm your satellite by hyper bubble, and we ramped up with Sputnik crash by terminal See, that's the music project of Coralie, a injure from Switzerland.

Dorit Chrysler  22:17  
I was so in awe of what wonderful contributions from all over the world reached us. And I just really want to thank to all these talented players literally all over the world that played a Theremin. And we're excited and generous enough to be willing to partake in this release, we did want to give a little historic span by including a Robert schillinger composition that's played by Torvalds. Johansson, a wonderful player whose work we all know when that work was being to me left paren and himself performed the part on the Theremin, which is a nice little caper. And then I also wanted to include a composition by herb Deutsch, who was instrumental in the development of the synthesizer and has been composing since the 70s. And he wrote beautiful pieces for Theremin that are also not very well known, so it was important to include him. And then everything else really lands in the presence of contemporary musicians using the Academy.

Rick Reid  23:23  
When will the album be available to purchase and where can people find it?

Dorit Chrysler 23:27  
We will start pre orders hopefully by the middle of December before the holidays and then the physical units should be in and ready to ship by the beginning of the new year and will be available for purchase at the New York Herrmann society.org website as well as on Bandcamp

Rick Reid  23:50  
for the benefit of Theremin 30 listeners, the New York Theremin society has actually moved up the preorder date, so you can reserve your copy of Theremin 100 right now, you can either go to their website or follow the link in the show notes for this episode at Theremin thirty.com.

In January, Hamburg, Germany based thereminist Andrew Levine will be on a mini tour of the eastern US with planned stops in Georgia, Florida and New York to finish this month's podcast. Here's a live improvisational recording featuring Andrew Levine on Theremin along with Sebastian grams on double bass and Andreas Kinneret Sean saxophone from the album, European electro acoustic chamber music here is track number one

Rick Reid  29:03  
this is a 30 minute show and time is about to run out. So I want to thank Ahmad ruse Dr. g Darth Elvis and Graham's printer rich and Levine for allowing me to play their music. Also a big thanks to dork Chrysler for being my interview guest and for all the work she's put into producing the new Theremin 100 compilation album. Coming up in the January 2020 episode, my guest will be Gordon Charlton who records under the artists name beat frequency, he'll be sharing with us some of his innovative tips and tricks for creating experimental ambient music with the Theremin. If you have music you'd like me to play in the January show, please contact me through the Theremin 30 website or the Facebook page. Until next time, I'm your host Rick Reid. Thank you for tuning in.

David Brower  29:51  
You've been listening to the Theremin 30 podcast visit Theremin 30 on the web at Theremin threezero.com

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