Courtesy of Christina Jensen
Text by Christina Jensen PR
Iconic analog synthesizer company Moog Music has premiered the video for “10,000 Bells” from theremin virtuoso Carolina Eyck and pianist Christopher Tarnow. The duo released its American debut LP, the adventurous Improvisations for Theremin and Piano, on November 18 on Butterscotch Records. The new video by director Falko Schuster was filmed on location in Eyck and Tarnow’s hometown of Leipzig, Germany and features slow motion reversed footage, a visual language that feels as otherworldly as the music itself.
Improvisations for Theremin and Piano is available on vinyl, CD, digitally, and in high res audio. Conceived and created in close collaboration with label founder and producer Allen Farmelo, Improvisations captures the finespun chemistry and musical intuition of Eyck and Tarnow playing in a completely improvised dialogue, and presents the instrument’s most virtuosic performer in an exceptionally candid – and entirely unedited – recording. Listen to the full album premiere, streaming at All Music: http://bit.ly/ImprovisationsAllMusic
Improvisations reclaims the theremin as an instrument of sincerity, expressive nuance and artistic depth. The music carries the harmonic sophistication of classical, the quasi-atonal sensibilities of Coltrane, and an unexpected sense of wonder and play – challenging the accepted rules of any genre. Presenting the improvisations as they were played, without editing, adds another dimension. Producer Allen Farmelo explains, “On this record what you hear is exactly what was played, and in my opinion the absence of editing lends these performances an organic vulnerability that is not always heard from meticulous virtuosos. With vulnerability comes depth as we sense something slightly uncertain moving out on the horizon beyond mastery. I wouldn’t trade that depth for any amount of perceived competency, and I consider it one of this record’s most potent qualities.” The titles of the improvisations (for example, “10,000 Bells,” “A Whale in Love,” “Earth and Sky”) are phrases that Farmelo wrote on sheets of paper and showed to Eyck and Tarnow as thematic starting points before they began improvising.
Carolina Eyck’s training goes directly back to Leon Theremin himself. She began studies at age seven with Russian thereminist Lydia Kavina, a student of Theremin’s most famous protégé Clara Rockmore. Eyck quickly grew frustrated with the limitations of her inherited technique and developed her own method of playing, using a highly modified theremin. She published The Art of Playing the Theremin, the first extensive and arguably most influential method book for the instrument, when she was 17. Today, still in her twenties, Eyck performs frequently as a guest artist with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Bern Symphony, and has collaborated with composers ranging from Heins Holliger to Kalevi Aho, with engagements across Europe, Japan, Pakistan, and Mexico.
Listen to the Album Premiere courtesy of All Music: http://bit.ly/
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