clara rockmore, “the swan”
from: The Swan by Saint-Saens with her sister Nadia Rosenberg on Piano
Clara Rockmore was a violin prodigy, who at the age of four became the youngest student at Saint Petersburg Conservatory. At the age of ten her family obtained visas and left for the United States. She enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music but as a teen she had to give up the violin due to tendinitis attributed to childhood malnutrition. She met fellow immigrant Leon Theremin, the inventor of the electronic musical instrument, the theremin, and became its most prominent player.
From Wikipedia
The instrument's controlling section usually consists of two metal antennas which function not as radio antennas but rather as position sensors. Each antenna forms one half of a capacitor with each of the thereminist's hands as the other half of the capacitor. These antennas capacitively sense the relative position of the hands and control oscillators for frequency with one hand, and amplitude (volume) with the other. The electric signals from the theremin are amplified and sent to a loudspeaker. Robert Moog produced her first album, The Art Of The Theremin in 1977.
-Alan West-
““There was never a bad peace or a good war”