In this September 2024 edition of Theremin 30, host Rick Reid plays new theremin music from Rob Schwimmer, Steve Bryson, and the International Theremin Camp Ensemble. Rick's guest is Danish music composer, teacher, and multi-instrumentalist Kristoffer Rosing-Schow.
FEATURED MUSIC*
- Drei Gesänge Op.18 - #1 "In meine innige Nacht" [Korngold] - Rob Schwimmer (Brooklyn, NY, USA)
- "Winter Voices" - Steve Bryson (San Rafael, CA, USA)
- "Teenage Message 2" [Rosing-Schow] - International Theremin Camp Ensemble
*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
- "Opera Glasses" - Phlogiston Theory & Ron Allen (Evanston, IL / Seattle, WA, USA)
- "Time Shadows" - Phlogiston Theory (Evanston, IL, USA)
INTERVIEW GUEST
- Kristopher Rosing-Schow, composer and conductor of "Teenage Message 2."
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.
SUPPORT THIS PODCAST
CONTACT
- Write to the show: theremin30podcast@gmail.com
CREDITS
- Producer/Writer/Host: Rick Reid
- Opening and closing announcer: David Brower
Copyright 2024 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
Rick, 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 Chicago, Illinois, Rick Reid.
Rick Reid 0:19
Hey, welcome to the theremin 30 podcast for September 2024 a little bit late this month, but I'd rather be late or skip a month to make sure I always have an interesting interview and quality music tracks to share with you. And as it just so happens, I have an interesting interview and quality music tracks to share with you. My guest is multi instrumentalist and composer Kristoffer Rosing-Schow, and I have new music from Rob Schwimmer Steve Bryson and the International Theremin camp ensemble.
Let's get started with a lovely modern classical performance by Rob Schwimmer playing Theremin live along with his own recorded piano accompaniment. This is Eric Wolfgang Korngold 1924, composition in Myna iniga Nacht, which Google Translate interprets as in my intimate night. It's from Korngold dry gasanga Opus 18. And was performed by Rob at the 2022 Gilmore piano festival. You can watch the video of his performance anytime on the theremin 30 YouTube playlist.
It's time now for the theremin 30 calendar of Theremin events. On September 27 Marla Goodman hosts a drop in Theremin art workshop at Montana State University's School of Art on September 28 Thea Munster plays the golden Tiki in Las Vegas on October 6, microtonal University begins a new season of online courses. On October 7, the bestiary, a theater production featuring music composed by Doric Chrysler, opens in Greenwich Village in New York City. And on Halloween night, Miles Brown performs solo and with the night terrors at the Melbourne Museum. For details about these events and more, check out the full calendar at Theremin thirty.com. Up next, I have a recent track from Steve Bryson of San Rafael, California. Steve has been creating experimental and ambient music for the past 50 years, and his music has been used in planetariums and immersive exhibits. Lately, he's been studying the theremin with Carolina Eyck, and this is one of His first Theremin-centric recordings. It's called Winter Voices.
That was winter voices by Steve Bryson from his music for Theremin album on band camp. He plans to add a couple more tracks to the album soon. Steve also has a new album with. San Francisco based electronic artist Carolyn Fok called Space Time canvas. You can find that album on band camp as well.
In June of this year, I attended international Theremin camp in a town called Rødovre in the suburbs of Copenhagen Denmark. It was a five day informal conference with about two dozen Theremin players from around Europe and North and South America. We all knew each other from participating in Lydia cavanagh's weekly online workshops, either as students or guest speakers, but most of us had never met in real life. We got together at the rowoa Music School for peer led music workshops and other creative activities, and on the last evening, we put on a theremin recital for the local community. The evening's program was mostly performed by professional level thereminist, including Lydia Kavanaugh, Torvald Jorgenson and Anna mogda de Hughes, but we all got to play a new composition called teenage message two by Christopher rosensko. I recently spoke with Christopher about his composition and how it went from an idea to a concert performance. Christopher, welcome to the theremin 30 podcast. Thank you. Thank you so much for our listeners who maybe aren't familiar with your work, tell us a little bit about your musical background. I understand you teach and you're a composer and you're in a jazz band. I'm
Kristoffer Rosing-Schow 11:33
educated as a saxophone player. I finished my education a five year study in 98 and I have been working since then, playing with my bands, teaching and making music for theater and dance. So I think these three areas are both in economically terms and in time pretty equal, teaching, playing with my bands and making music for theater and dance performances.
Rick Reid 12:00
Now we featured your band in a previous episode where you play saxophone and Theremin,
Kristoffer Rosing-Schow 12:06
yes, that's true. Also in this band, I play bass clarinet and all different kinds of stuff. I decided maybe 10 years ago that I wanted to focus mainly on being a composer. So now I play all the instrument I think is needed for the music I compose more than than working as a like a musician.
Rick Reid 12:27
Now, you had a really interesting and challenging composition project this summer. You and I both were at the International Theremin camp outside of Copenhagen, Denmark, and the highlight of the week, or the finale of the week, I should say, was a concert where the public was invited to attend. And then there was a piece that you composed.
Kristoffer Rosing-Schow 12:50
I decided early on, when I knew that we were going to meet, that it would be a fun and nice thing to try to play together all of us. So I proposed, and it was accepted that I will try to make a composition for 25 Theremin, and later on, I added piano and guitar and percussion. And yeah, it was a fun challenge and a big challenge to compose this music. But I think we ended up doing well, and it was a lot of fun, and of course, also a big challenge to make these Theremin sound in the same room.
Rick Reid 13:20
Yeah, that was surprising to me. It was a rectangular Recital Hall. There were all of the thereminist around three of the walls, and we were all maybe 5, 6, 7 feet apart from each other, two meters from each other. We found out that for some reason, there were certain Theremins that would interfere with other theremin. So somebody 20 feet away could be playing their Theremin, and it would affect the pitch of my theremin. Yeah, it was just bizarre.
Kristoffer Rosing-Schow 13:53
Sometimes it's just strange. I know there's something about the theremin being connected to the same clock units that can interfere. And of course, also we found out that it was especially some models of the theremin who had problems with specific other models of theremin. I anticipated that there could be some problems, so I had tried to compose a thing that would be robust to these kind of problems,
Rick Reid 14:18
the way the composition was set up as you had a core band that was at the stage end of the room, and then the rest of us were sort of a theremin choir, I think is what I would describe it. And with the choir, part of the richness is that everybody's not playing exactly the same pitch at the same moment, and so that kind of worked into what you were writing for us.
Kristoffer Rosing-Schow 14:41
I knew before starting writing that there will be all kinds of people at the camp, so I was pretty sure that there will probably be some who had difficulty reading music, also a lot of different levels of playing. So I took inspiration from one of my children. She. Is a guitar player, and when she was very young, she participated in a guitar camp, and I heard a concert there with 200 guitars playing the same competition. And I noticed that 180 of these children were playing the composition, and 20 of them were playing something else. And I kind of liked that sound. It is sort of human distortion that you could use to your advantage. As long as the main core of the of the sound is the notes that you want, then it's actually only fine. And can add to the music that there's a uncertainty. And of course, you, being a therian player, also know that uncertainty is a very big part of the theremin instrument. It is, it is the danger of the instrument that we also love.
Rick Reid 15:43
So let's talk more about the composition. Tell me the title and explain what that means.
Kristoffer Rosing-Schow 15:48
The title of my composition was teenage message two, the second Theremin concert for extraterrestrials. And this is an inspiration I got from a real story. There was a teenage message one, which was performed in 2001 it was a live Theremin concert being broadcast to outer space. Lydia, my teacher, was a part of this project. As far as I understand it, teenagers from around Russia was chosen to choose something that they would like to show to the universe, and this was put into a three parts transmission, the first part being like a steady sound to make the extra results recognize, here's something. And the second part was, I think, a 30 minute live Theremin performance. And the third part was data pictures being sent up in different data formats. So I thought this was a wonderful story. Also, of course, the theremin, you know, has this double history of being a serious, of course, and wonderful instrument, but also it has this kitsch thing, the Sci Fi aspect of the theremin. So I wanted to tap into that as well. So my story is that this is the second transmission to the extraterrestrials.
Rick Reid 17:01
I thought it was fascinating how your composition sort of was in surround sound, in where you wrote and conducted for the 3d space in the room.
Kristoffer Rosing-Schow 17:12
This was an idea that actually came out of the fact that I realized that we could not be on stage all of us, that we had to be at the walls. And so suddenly you have this situation where you have a given treaty situation. We had parts of the compositions where it was only the Theremins in the back who played, or only the therms in the front, or different movements around the room, which is an effect I heard at many concerts, but I really liked it, and also it, it is a thing that draw in the attention of the audience, also, maybe even if they do not know this kind of music before, but just the fact that the music is moving around makes it easier for the audience to be engaged. I think
Rick Reid 17:53
now I was trying to think of a category for this composition. It seems like classical is the correct word, but it's modern at the same time.
Kristoffer Rosing-Schow 18:03
Yeah, this is the area that I like to work in as a composer. I would not say that I know a lot about classical music, but I know some things, and I like to mix things up. We used for a big part of the composition a direct quote from Igor savinsky, sarkod de proton that was like a core thing in the composition, a specific rhythm and a specific chord that he uses. I use this as the backbone of the composition,
Rick Reid 18:29
and for a live performance like this, I can't help but think there's sort of a sadness to it in that it will never exist again in the same way, even if you perform it again.
Kristoffer Rosing-Schow 18:41
I spoke with a friend yesterday, and we talked about, like 200 years ago, where the only possibility you had of listening to music would be to go to a live concert. This holds a certain beauty also. But of course, as you know, we recorded the track, but the only real way to experience this was, of course, to be there.
Rick Reid 18:58
Will there be a teenage message three, and will you be involved?
Kristoffer Rosing-Schow 19:02
Probably, yes, we are talking now about doing another camp in in '26 if we meet again, I think we should play something again.
Rick Reid 19:11
To learn more about Kristoffer Rosing-Schow and his other music projects, including his band to The Counterfictionals click on his name in this month's show notes at Theremin30.com. Now let's finish the show with the live recording of the world premiere performance of teenage message two.
Thank you so much to Rob Schwimmer, Steve Bryson, the International Theremin camp ensemble, and Kristoffer Rosing-Schow for helping me with this episode. And as always, a special thanks to the listeners who support this series with small one time or monthly donations. I'll be back soon with another half hour of Theremin music and interviews. Until then, I'll see you somewhere in the ether.
David Brower 29:49
You've been listening to the theremin 30 podcast. Visit Theremin 30 on the web at Theremin30.com.
