SPARK Festival 2011: Lydia Kavina

Lydia Kavina flashes a hand-drawn electrical circuit on the screen. Two loops, two hands. Too much for the audience, which gasps in chorus. A skeptic with blond wisps about her face raises her hand: “Is it possible for us to build our own machine without – you know – a rocket science degree?”

Kavina chortles. She is addressing creative types at the 2011 Wintec Media Arts Festival SPARK, who are clearly more enthralled with the otherworldliness of her music than its workings. I spy a bearded and greying fellow in the front row whom I think I recognise from a current production of King Lear. He wears a knotty knitted beanie in paua shades, a periwinkle-blue knit cardigan and an evergreen tartan shirt. Closest to me are music students in skinny jeans and heavy fringes. The man across the row sleeps through his cellphone. His head is tilted back, mouth open, arms folded across a generous chest. Grey waves fall away equally far from his chin and scalp. I feel out of my depth but for a different reason from everyone else.

For the record, theremin kits are on sale in Hamilton, and the science behind the instrument is as simple as its application is revolutionary. Playing a theremin well is another matter.

Léon Theremin (nee Lev Termen) was born in Saint Petersburg in 1896 to a partly French family. He showed an early interest in Physics, especially electricity, and was known to academics in the field before he left high school. Kids, don’t try this at home:  the young Léon built a million-volt Tesla coil in his backyard lab. It is said that the idea of the theremin came to him when he noticed that the Tesla coil hummed at a different pitch when someone stood nearby. All that a theremin does is amplify that hum.

Kavina’s theremin is a squat metal box with a straight vertical antenna on the far right and a horizontal loop coming from the left. One would think that the world’s first electronic instrument would look more like the whiz-bang behind the Wizard of Oz, but photos of Theremin’s invention in the 1920s show little shift in concept. There is nothing remarkable about the theremin until someone like Kavina lifts her hands and a pleading note hovers in the air with her fingers. She has touched nothing; her hands are warping the force field around the antennae. With her left she controls the volume; her right dances around the vertical post to pinpoint the pitch.

Kavina treats her listeners to a history of the man and his machine. She ought to know the story well – Theremin was her great-uncle and instructor. Her speech is peppered with a sense of humour that sees her receive a cloth gift bag at the end, ask “What is this?” and pretend to put it on her head.

First, a piece by Tchaikovsky. The theremin sings like a violin on Auto-Tune – a human voice with an electric edge. Folk may better recognise its eery sound from science-fiction or horror films like Tim Burton’s ‘Ed Wood’. Picking on its ethereal quality, some, like eccentric “free music” composer Percy Grainger, have heralded the theremin a liberation from the interference of the performer. Kavina takes pains to declare the theremin an instrument and not merely a machine. She maintains that Grainger’s pieces, played by computer as he implied, are empty and cold. Ironically, only the human touch can bring the theremin to life.

The last performance of the day is indeed lively. Kavina has chosen a piece in the Grainger tradition, in which the score is scribbled with deliberate anarchy on plain paper. I wonder how anyone can make sense of the loops and twirls on the staves. Remember that there is no physical guide for a theremin player, just a good ear and imagination. And some imagination! The man across the aisle wakes. King Lear is stiff in his seat. We gasp together at the drama, the precision, the sheer musicality that Kavina draws from the garble. The slight Russian lady in a dark pant-suit is a rocket scientist…with a million volts of creative energy.

Otherworldliness: Lydia Kavina explains the theremin circuit diagram. Superimposed is a section of Percy Grainger's 'Free Music' score for four theremins. Kavina has colour-coded amplitude and pitch lines for each instrument.

THE DEETS

Event: SPARK International Festival of Media, Arts and Design

Time: Morning, noon and night for a week in August each year.

Location: Waikato Institute of Technology (Wintec) and other central city spots

Tickets: So free it’s criminal.

Tourist Value: Whether watching emerging Kiwi artists or truly international gems like Kavina, you won’t be sleeping through this one.

 

Bonus Hoots:

Dorit Chrysler on the Moog Polyphonic Theremin

Radio NZ celebrates Kavina coming to Hamilton