In this April 2025 edition of the Theremin 30 Podcast, host Rick Reid plays theremin music from Denmark, England, France, and the USA. Rick celebrates the show's sixth anniversary with highlights from past interviews.
FEATURED MUSIC*
- "Poems and Rain" - The Counterfictionals (Copenhagen, Denmark)
- "Attitu-de Reduction" - Matteo Ciminari (London, England)
- "Così fan tutte, Act. I: Soave sia il vento" [Mozart] - Grégoire Blanc (Paris, France)
- "Broken Hands" - Annaglyph (Berkeley, California, 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
- "Opera Glasses" - Phlogiston Theory & Ron Allen (Evanston, IL / Seattle, WA, USA)
INTERVIEW GUESTS (from the Theremin 30 archives)
- Dan Burns - Burns Theremins
- Michelle Moog-Koussa - The Bob Moog Foundation
- Herb Deutsch (1932-2022) - Synthesizer Pioneer
- Xiao Xiao - Computer Scientist and Electronic Music Inventor
- Drew Raison - Electronic Music Education and Preservation Project
- Mike Buffington - RCA Theremin Restoration Specialist
- Miles Brown - Theremin Player, Composer, Producer
CALENDAR OF THEREMIN EVENTS
- Visit the Theremin 30 Calendar of Theremin Events
MEDIA LINKS
- The Theremin 30 Playlist on YouTube includes music videos and concert performances of songs featured in this podcast series.
SUPPORT THIS PODCAST
CONTACT
- Write to the show: theremin30podcast@gmail.com
CREDITS
- Producer/Writer/Host: Rick Reid
- Opening and closing announcer: David Brower
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 0:04
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, Rick Reid.
Rick Reid 0:18
Hey. Welcome to the April 2025, edition of the Theremin 30 podcast. This is the first episode of season seven, so that makes this the sixth anniversary of the show. I started way back in 2019 which seems almost like a lifetime ago. So much has changed in the world and the theremin community and in my own life since then. It's a bit mind boggling to think about it. Over the next half hour, fortunately, we won't have to do any deep thinking, but some deep listening is in order with new Theremin music from Denmark, England by way of Italy, or maybe it's Italy by way of England, also France, and the USA. We'll also revisit some of the interviews of the past six years to help you catch up on episodes you may have missed. Let's get things started with a couple of European recording artists and their new music featuring theremin. First, it's a new single from the Danish band the Counterfictionals, featuring Kristoffer Rosing-Schow. After that, we'll hear from Matteo Ciminari. I'll tell you more about both recordings on the other side.
Rick Reid 10:07
We started the show with a track called poems and rain by Danish band the Counterfictionals. It's the first single from their forthcoming album, An Incomplete Encyclopedia of Gentle Emotions. The band describes this as the score to an imaginary movie starring Timothy Chalamet as James Joyce and Tilda Swinton as the God of Rain. The Counterfictionals are led by composer and multi-instrumentalist Kristoffer Rosing-Schow. You can hear more of their music in the october 2023 episode of Theremin 30 and I interviewed Kristoffer in the September 2024 episode our second track came from Matteo Ciminari. Attitu-de Reduction is a track from his new album called Mental Core Drillings. Matteo is based in London, but he recorded the new album last year in Italy. Matteo plays electric guitar throughout the new album, and Theremin as a supporting instrument on just a couple of the tracks. You can hear music from his previous album Fried Hippocampus in the July 2019, episode of Theremin 30. And for more information about both Kristoffer and Matteo, click on their names in this month's show notes at Theremin30.com.
Rick Reid 11:18
Up next, I have a recent performance by French thereminist Gregoire Blanc from Mozart's comic opera, Cosi Fan Tutti. Gregoire plays three vocal parts, multi-tracked using a D-Lev digital Theremin plus he plays all the other instruments and his rendition of Soave sia il vento, or May The Wind Be Gentle.
Rick Reid 14:39
That was Gregoire Blanc performing the operatic trio, May the Wind Be Gentle from Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutti. That track is not available on an album, but you can watch the music video on the Theremin 30 YouTube playlist. I spoke with Gregoire in the April 2021 episode, and again in the March 2022 episode. And my interview with D-Lev Theremin designer Eric Wallen is featured in the February 2022 episode.
Rick Reid 15:15
Because this is the sixth anniversary episode of the theremin 30 podcast, I thought it might be nice to take a look back at some of the interviews we've had on the show. If you're a new listener, take notes so you can go back and hear the full episodes you may have missed my very first guest, way back in April of 2019 was Theremin designer, Dan Burns.
Dan Burns 15:37
I started making Theremin actually when I was a kid, and later discovered that people were interested in them. That's really how I started making Theremins and selling them, because I'd make Theremin and people wanted them, and I'd put one up on eBay and people would buy it and they'd like it. So that kind of got the whole thing going.
Rick Reid 15:58
Are there any touring acts or recording artists we may have heard of that use your theremin.
Dan Burns 16:02
Yes, there is quite a number of them. One that comes to mind is Lez Zeppelin, which is an all girl Zeppelin band. Also Tesla is famous for using one of our Theremins on a song about Nikola Tesla.
Rick Reid 16:24
Other guests in that first season included thereminist Eric Ross, Dorit Chrysler, Clara Rockmore's nephew Robert Sherman, and Bob Moog's daughter Michelle Moog-Koussa in an extended two-part interview.
Michelle Moog-Koussa 16:36
Well, the Bob Moog Foundation was created to carry on Bob Moog pioneering legacy, and the genesis of it really was the family and friends discovering what an incredible inspirational force Bob had been to 1000s of people all over the world throughout his life and career, and the goal is to carry that inspiration forward. And so our mission is to inspire people through the intersection of science, music and innovation. We have an educational project called Dr Bob sound School, where we teach little kids about the science of sound. We have a huge archive of a material that we protect and preserve and share with other museums and organizations and researchers, and we now have our own Moogseum, where those two focuses of education and archive preservation converge.
Rick Reid 17:34
Season two began right after the worldwide COVID lockdown began. Lydia Cavanagh was my first guest of the season, talking about her weekly online Theremin workshop that continues to this day. That same season, I also spoke with open Theremin designer Urs Goudenz, documentary filmmaker Stephen M. Martin and synthesizer pioneer Herb Deutsch. I'm going to do something unusual today, and we're not going to talk about synthesizers. We're going to talk about theremins.
Herb Deutsch 18:05
Okay, I put them both in a world that I love.
Rick Reid 18:08
Now, you got your first theremin? What around 1962, 61?
Herb Deutsch 18:14
Yes, I got my first Theremin after reading Bob Moog article on the theremin, what it is and how to make it assassinated me very much, because, of course, I knew what a theremin was, but I never had one. And so it was a fascinating thing to read. And as soon as I read it, I called his office. Then the phone number was given in the article, and I called that phone number. And of course, his wife answered. And I've probably said this a million times to a million people, but I did the same thing everyone else would do, and I said, is Bob Moog there? And of course, she She corrected me. He wasn't there, but she sent me a theremin kit, which I believe cost me about $45.
Rick Reid 19:07
One of my favorite interviews from season three was with Xiao Xiao in August of 2021. We talked about how she developed a way to make a theremin sing.
Xiao Xiao 19:21
This was a project called T Voks, spelled T, V, O, k, s, and the idea is to connect a vocal synthesizer to the theremin, which gives the theremin the ability to sing with lyrics and to recite poetry. This project came about when I was doing a short research pilot project at a lab in Paris called LEM, which stands for luthriacoustic music. This group had developed a vocal synthesizer that's controlled by hand gestures, and they connected it to a Wacom tablet where you're able to, to kind of draw on the screen and sing with this really realistic sounding synthesized voice. At that point, I had started to play the theremin and I had been playing for a few months, and I was really excited about it. And with a colleague, Greg from the lab, we kind of got together during weekends to see whether we could connect the vocal synthesizer to the theremin, then it kind of worked pretty well, because we already know as Theremin players that the theremin has this incredible capacity to mimic the human voice when you add lyrics to it. That's just another dimension that you can play with.
Rick Reid 20:39
During season four, I got to visit with Drew Raison from the Electronic Music Education and Preservation Project. He told me about some of the rare and historic Theremins in their archive.
Drew Raison 20:50
When a rare instrument hits the market and it ought to be preserved, as opposed to ending up in a private collection that a generation is going to miss it and it could end up in a dumpster. Sometimes we have to jump in there and really save it. And a couple of our advisors, one in particular, a gentleman named Brian keyhu, helped steer us into the history of the theremin. And again, from the position of a curator, he wants to tell the story of the theremin and show the development of it. So we have, I consider this to be a flagship object. It's a 1929 RCA theremin. That's the large wooden one that is just so beautiful looking. And we see in pictures of many early Theremin players. And it also has its matching speaker cabinet. And that Theremin sat in our lobby for the longest time, and it was a highlight when Mano Davina, who I'm sure you know and have spoken with, he's been on the show. He also lives five minutes from here, ironically, and he was playing on that Theremin, which is a finicky instrument. The tone of that instrument was shockingly delicious. I kind of almost can't describe it beyond it was almost like, imagine a theremin that kind of had a little bit of a warm blanket feeling to it. But, I mean, that's old school technology there at its finest.
Rick Reid 22:03
In season five, one of my guests was Mike Buffington, who specializes in repairing and restoring vintage RCA theremin. He told me about his project to meticulously restore and publish a set of four authentic RCA Theremin documents, including two marketing brochures, an owner's manual and service notes.
Mike Buffington 22:22
These are documents that were printed around the time of the RCA Theremin The goal was to get these things professionally printed and to make them look as authentic and original as possible.
Rick Reid 22:36
Well, it sounds like it's a perfect companion to an RCA Theremin that's in a museum or in a private collection, right?
Mike Buffington 22:44
Absolutely, I have a set sitting on one of my RCAs.
Rick Reid 22:47
You're the only person I know who can say one of my RCAs,
Mike Buffington 22:53
it's not it's not a problem. I'm okay.
Rick Reid 22:55
Why do these need to be reproduced in the first place?
Mike Buffington 22:58
You're not going to find a better looking replica instruction manual, anything you can find out there is going to be laser printed and bound with staples and won't have that beautiful brown cover, won't be offset printed, won't have that red ink on the cover. And so it's like, Why? Why settle for something less than that?
Rick Reid 23:17
Season Six was a particularly challenging time for me. Finally, after more than six months without full time work, I landed a new career as a writerproducer with a group of broadcast TV networks based in Chicago. The past year was one of the most stressful periods of my whole life. As I made the cross country move and got settled into my new life, I managed to produce only five episodes of the theremin 30 podcast, but I think they were some of the most interesting. As I spoke with Theremin designer Jake Rothman and four recording artists, including Miles Brown, who performed on the soundtrack of the indie horror film Late Night With the Devil.
Miles Brown 23:56
So this movie, late night with the devil was being produced in Melbourne, and the Cairns brothers, Colin and Cameron Cairns, got in touch with me, and they were like, we're doing this movie, and we need to build a prop. The movie set in the early 70s. And we wonder if you could be a consultant for us and make sure we're building the right prop, like what Theremin would have been around. And so I was like, yeah, it would be an RCA, so help them with that. And then they were like, oh, one of our characters is going to play the theremin. Could you just show him how a theremin works so that he understands what he's doing? So Rhys came around to my house, and I sort of showed him how the theremin works. Then they called me and they're like, we've been thinking, maybe it would be nice if you could actually be on set and play Theremin off camera while he's miming, so that it feels and looks right. So then I went down and did that, and then it just kept on snowballing from there, really. And then they were like, obviously, we need you to record the theremin for the for the movie, for the parts. And if you, if you've seen the movie, you know, there's features in the story quite a lot, and then I ended up playing on the soundtrack as well, like my friend Glenn Richards from the band Augie March, was doing the score. And I've played with Glenn many times in over the years. And so I ended up playing on the score as well.
Rick Reid 25:12
And that brings us up to season seven, starting with the episode you're listening to right now. I hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane. I invite you to browse the now more than 25 hours of Theremin content in previous episodes over the first six years. You can find notes for every episode on the website Theremin30.com. Now let's finish this show with new music from Annaglyph, a project of Northern California based musician, artist and animator Ann Wherry, her latest creation, complete with a fascinating music video on the theremin 30 YouTube playlist is called Broken Hands.
Rick Reid 29:02
That was broken hands by Annaglyph. You can listen to four other recordings by Annaglyph in previous episodes. Just go to the theremin30.com website and search for Annaglyph in the text search box near the upper right corner of the page. Thanks so much for all of the musicians who have contributed music to this show over the past six years, including this month's feature artists, the Counterfictionals, Matteo Ciminari, Gregoire Blanc, and Annaglyph. Also, thank you for the generous listeners who help support this show with small one time or monthly donations. Every little bit helps to keep the show going. 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 Theremin30.com.
