The grand-niece of Léon Theremin, Kavina, was born in Moscow and began studying the instrument under the direction of Theremin when she was nine years old. Five years later, she gave her first theremin concert, which marked the beginning of a musical career that has so far led to more than 1000 theatre, radio, and television performances around the world.

In this video, she plays Debussy's beautiful Clair de Lune using her left hand to control the attack and volume of each note while changing the pitch in her right hand. This is incredibly difficult to co-ordinate and takes years of practice to do well.

Léon Theremin was born in Saint Petersburg in 1896 into a family of French ancestry. He started to be interested in electricity at the age of 7, and by 13 he was experimenting with high frequency circuits. The theremin is an early electronic musical instrument controlled without contact from the player. Professor Léon Thérémin patented the device in 1928. It was originally known as the termenvox or aetherphone, the former of which was subsequently anglicised to theremin (sometimes misspelled as theramin). The controlling section usually consists of two metal antennas which sense the position of the player's hands and control oscillator(s) for frequency with one hand, and amplitude (volume) with the other. The electric signals from the theremin are amplified and sent to a loudspeaker to produce an eerie almost ethereal sound.

Web CMN