New York Theremin Summit

Scurrying across Brooklyn’s infamous Gowanus Canal, sidestepping puddles and watching steam curl away from the canal’s tepid, oily surface, I shuffle quickly down Carroll Street, passing graf?ti-scrawled scrap-metal fences and heaps of industrial detritus, turning my face away from the dank stench of the polluted waterway. As patches of cobblestone break up the pavement, I approach a tall, black wrought-iron fence, duck inside and squish toward an unmarked grain silo. A woman in a raincoat is hovering in a doorway, collecting $10 bills.

I cross my name off the list and climb a dark wet staircase to the silo’s second story, stepping out onto a dusty plywood floor. The Issue Project Room is small and warm; speakers and wires crisscross a low, unfinished ceiling. Inside, people are drinking beer and wine from plastic cups. Some 15 minutes before the event’s scheduled start, all the folding chairs are full. Circuit boxes in different shapes and sizes—each boasting two silver antennas—line the far wall, looking more like makeshift time-travel devices than proper instruments. Audience members are asked to turn phones off—cell signals will likely interfere with the performance. The New York City Experimental Theremin Orchestra is moments from opening its second official Theremin Summit.

DO NOT TOUCH

Invented in 1919 by Russian intellectual Leon Theremin, the theremin is one of the earliest electronic instruments ever constructed, and the first designed to be played entirely without human contact. When properly mastered, a theremin can sound like a violin, a cello or even a human voice (classically trained thereminists often follow the main vocal lines of arias). Its moan is bright, clean and vaguely off-kilter. To work, the theremin generates an audio signal by combining two high-frequency radio signals, with players controlling the frequency and volume of the output signal by disrupting the atmosphere around the antennas.

Despite a lack of direct contact, theremin playing is intensely physical: Thereminists curl and twist like vaguely deranged air guitarists, bodies taut and rigid, hands flailing, brows furrowed. Meanwhile, there’s an unpredictability inherent to the theremin’s wail, something ominous and inorganic that makes the process of playing similar to snake charming. It’s hard not to imagine that one wrong movement might bring an entire building down. I glance nervously at the room’s splintering support beams, and hold my breath.

“Everyone finds their own unique technique of how to move their hands,” explains New York City Theremin Society founder and Austrian-born thereminist Dorit Chrysler. “Obviously a lot of body control is required, and moving any part of the body alters the pitch, so the possibilities of physical approach are various.”

Tonight, Chrysler is playful and giggly, punching the air around her antenna, legs splayed, blonde hair tossing, perfectly posed in classic-rock axe-solo mode. Chrysler adds vocals and beats to her playing, while her fellow Summit participants employ piano players and loops. One player tugs on the plastic mask of a smiling Asian boy, tucks a drum between his legs and starts banging cymbals together. Others rely solely on their theremins. After each performer plays a solo set, they return for a group improvisation, flipping on their theremins in unison. The room is overstuffed, and people are spilling out the door into the rain. Inside, we nod along. I’m dizzy.

Leon Theremin emigrated to New York City in or around 1928, quickly establishing a laboratory dedicated to the scientific study of electronic sound; a decade later, Theremin was whisked back to the Soviet Union (involuntarily, some say) and placed in Butyrka prison, later working the gold mines in Kolyma; eventually, Theremin was ordered to work in a Soviet think-tank alongside scientists Andrei Tupelov and Sergei Korolov to develop a covert listening device for the Soviet government. Following Theremin’s abrupt departure and reassignment, his instrument inspired a handful of virtuosos, but ultimately fell into obscurity.

BRINGING OUT POSITIVE VIBES

When Beach Boy Brian Wilson requested the instrument in 1966 for the opening twiddles of “Good Vibrations,” neither a theremin nor a trained player could be found. Trombonist Paul Tanner finally offered up his Tannerin (then known only as “Paul’s Box,”) a mechanically controlled homemade device that adequately mimics a theremin, and for The Beach Boys’ tour, synth guru Robert Moog developed a slide-controlled oscillator for Wilson to manipulate.

In 1967, theremins showed up on Captain Beefheart’s landmark Safe as Milk, and in 1969, Led Zeppelin’s explosive bedroom anthem “Whole Lotta Love” featured a Jimmy Page theremin solo. In 1994, the documentary Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey was released, and just last year, multi-instrumentalist Hadji Bakara brightened Wolf Parade’s fall tour with some theremin hijinks. The theremin may not overtake the electric guitar as the noisemaker of choice for disaffected teens, but its presence has somehow miraculously endured.

Dorit Chrysler founded the New York City Theremin Society in 2005, and has worked closely with the Issue Project Room to co-curate Theremin Summits. “I coined the term ‘Theremin Society,’ to create a platform for thereminists to exchange, inspire and join forces easily,” Chrysler says. “As the theremin is still a somewhat obscure or, let’s say, commercially unestablished instrument, people drawn to it tend to be autonomous, unique and often not the most sociable individuals—all the more reason to lure them out of their caves and give them a chance to exchange ideas with likeminded people.”