As there are some people at MMD (see below) interested in the
'Theremin' instrument, I want to draw attention to the performance
of the

  'Theremin-Orchestra'
   Friday, 8th of September 2000 - 18:30
   Schloss Kittsee

as part of the festival "Europa 2000 - Ost.Sud.Ost: Musik und mehr"
(Europe 2000 - East.South.East: Music and more) from 8-10 September
2000.

On Saturday Andre Smirnov, the conductor of the 'Theremin-Orchestra',
together with Lidia Kavina and other members of the ensemble, will
show and demonstrate in a workshop the methods of construction and
also playing the Theremin.  Also an exhibition of the instruments
(collection of Andre Smirnov) can be visited during the whole festival.

Kittsee is located east of Vienna near the Hungarian border.  More
information can be obtained from web page  http://www.oso.at/

Hans van Oost wrote in 000228 MMDigest:

> ... Theremin (a man of Russian origin, who went back to
> Stalin's Soviet Union somewhere in the thirties!) made an
> instrument with two antennas (one for regulating the pitch
> and one for the volume) ...

Terry Smythe mentioned at 971009 MMDigest (see below) that Lev
Segejev Termen, who emigrated to the USA, also called Leon Theremin(?),
was kidnapped by the USSR secret service due to the reason to help
developing techniques to detect signals in waveforms which have a very
low amplitude, e.g. clearing the noise from a recording in a pub with
a lot of background noise so that the (even whispered) conversation of
two people can be eavesdropped.

Terry Smythe wrote in 971009 MMDigest:

> In 1945, he was abducted right out of his New York studio in front
> of his class by people believed to be Russian agents.  He was not
> heard of again for many years and he was presumed executed by the
> Russians at that time.  As it turns out he was thrust into a labour
> camp for a number of years, then plucked out to work with the KGB
> on counter-espionage projects involving enhancement of delicate
> audio recordings of secret conversations.

Robbie Rhodes commented at 000301 MMDigest

 [ Thanks for the nice report, Lorraine; it surely is a unique
 [ instrument.  Both the Theremin and Les ondes Martenot use
 [ electronics to generate a monophonic solo voice, under the
 [ control of a skilled musician.  The slide whistle and the
 [ slide trombone do the same, and without electricity!  The
 [ true self-playing mechanical music instrument must also have
 [ a stored binary data file to control the instrument, such as
 [ a punched paper roll or a pinned cylinder or a MIDI data file.

More information about Theremin can be found in articles from

  Philippe Rouille (970119 MMDigest),
  L. Douglas Henderson (970619),
  A. B. Bonds (970627),
  Bruce Clark (971009),
  Karl Ellison (980509)  <alt.music.makers.theremin>
  Dave Kerr (980707)
  Julie Landry (980926)
  Dan Wilson (981011)
  Bruce Miller (990630)
  John Lanphere (990701)  <http://www.bigbriar.com>

Claus Kucher