a theremin recital

Recently I went to Tonic to see a theremin player I'd heard about, Pamelia Kurstin. Some call her "the greatest in the world." As a non-practitioner of the theremin, I don't know its challenges so it's hard to know who's the best. I do gather by watching that it's extremely difficult to get right. On the guitar, you have strings you hit for certain notes, along with frets that place you quite accurately on pitch within the range of tones that string will allow. On the violin, however, there are no frets, which is why beginners playing violin can sound so awful. You sort of have to learn where the imaginary frets would be in order to hit the notes that our western-music-trained ears will accept. Now on the theremin, there are no frets, there is no fretboard, and there are not even any strings. This means that the x, y, z and all other possible axes are wide open to you as an artist, and wide open for making mistakes and unpleasant sounds. Have you seen the theremin played? Are you fortunate enough to have seen the documentary "Theremin"? I recommend it. You're most likely to have heard the theremin in the song "Good Vibrations/The Sunkist Commercial." It also played a big role in 50's and 60's science fiction soundtracks, which makes most people instinctively creeped out when they hear the instrument. That's too bad, because it has a lot of capabilities and possibilities.

Pamelia Kurstin has been trying to expand these possibilities. Unlike some expert players, she does not try to make her instrument sound like a classical violin. Nor does she play it just for freaky effect. However in her band, Barbez, she gets sort of lost. I was trying to describe their genre to someone and came up with "Chaos." They have all sorts of pan-global influences and lots of members and an anything goes fun party attitude. It looks like a lot of fun to do. I guess it's fun to watch. But it's not totally to my taste. It's Noodle Rock. Pamelia had promised a solo set on this occasion, so my friend who's a big fan of hers but doesn't live here urged me to go. When I got there I was disappointed because there were three additional people on stage and they didn't sound all that good. There was a passable woman singing in Portugese and two longhaired guys noodling on guitar, bass and xylophone. That's right, there were more instruments than people. It turns out the two guys are from Barbez and the feminist in me says "why can't they leave her alone to shine without their wannabe Can stoner jamming? Dicks." But it seems like she wanted them there, she wasn't all that comfortable being alone on stage, she only did it for one song the whole evening. And when the guys left the stage to watch, they looked at her in rapt attention and admiration. (feminist read: they put her on a pedestal)

But back to the set list. After the portugese lady singer, there was a long jam with the two guys and Pamelia. At some point there was this really grating loud bassline and I complained to my companion and he said "that's the theremin" and I realized that sure enough, she was creating an incredibly bass-y bass, for such are the capabilities of this instrument. Later she was making high-pitched squealing sounds. Both extremes were a bit beyond the tolerance of this bourgeois listener. In addition it was made aurally clear that the xylophone player had been active in the Javanese Gamelan Club in college. Nothing wrong with that, I'm just saying. Then the boys stepped down and up came a woman friend, who looked like a participant in an Victorian seance, just in time for this interesting exhibit at the Met: (The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult). The woman stood in Pamelia's position at the theremin, and Pamelia stood in front about three feet away and played both the woman AND the theremin. It WAS like a seance because it seemed to be magic. I'm sure there is some rational explanation though. Next up was Pamelia's solo, seemingly something of her own composition, and highlighting her ablities with not only her instrument but also its various knobs and her own pedals that could sample the music as it happened and then repeat it in a loop, allowing her to create bigger and bigger virtual groups of players. It was like when you play the "name game": my name is Kathy and I like cabbage. Your name is Kathy and you like cabbage, my name is Pamelia and I like prunes. Your name is Kathy... and so on, building up, except everyone is talking at once. I mean basically yes, it's a synthesizer. Except it's the only synthesizer I know of that has such a deeply organic component as its point of departure. I would imagine that if she gained a great deal of weight, for she could not possibly lose any, her playing would sound quite different. Like if Barbra Streisand got a nose job. But I digress.

After this she seemed unable to take the attention any longer and called nearly everyone up to the stage for a "dance party." Some eccentric German people danced, for it was Eccentric German People Dancing Music.