“If I want to play in tune, I have to feel in tune! Because my body is all I’ve got”
The world’s foremost theremin player reinvented her instrument as a teenager, and has since brought its ethereal sounds to new audiences, discovers Kate Molleson
Carolina Eyck
Carolina Eyck was 17 when she published her first book on theremin technique. This was no hand guide to the basic mechanics of the thing, nor a glossary of existing playing styles, nor a history of theremin virtuosos. Eyck’s book, , introduced a new way of playing with refined hand gestures and unprecedented precision. Still a teenager, she had identified how to finesse her own performance style using a method she called the Eight Finger Position Technique. She has spent the intervening 15 years honing that technique, commissioning works for theremin and composing her own albums layered with ambient vocals. She has even given a TED Talk on why the theremin is the ultimate gauge of a musician’s emotional well-being. Now 32 and speaking to me during lockdown from her flat inhas had more than 15 million online views.
