Clara Rockmore

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Clara Rockmore (1911 to 1998) was a classical violin prodigy and a virtuoso of the theremin, an electronic instrument that is played without touch. She was born in Vilnius, then part of the Russian Empire, into a Lithuanian-Jewish family. She was the sister of the pianist Nadia Reisenberg. At the age of four she became the youngest student ever at the St Petersburg conservatoire, where she studied with the violinist Leopold Auer. After the October Revolution the family moved back to Vilnius and then to Warsaw, before leaving for the United States in 1921. There she studied at the Curtis Institute of Music.

Music and breakthrough

As a teenager she developed tendinitis in her bowing arm, which made her give up the violin. After meeting Léon Theremin she got to know his instrument and became its best-known player. She performed with orchestras in New York and Philadelphia and toured from coast to coast with Paul Robeson. She also helped Theremin refine his instrument. Not until 1977 did her first commercial record appear, The Art of the Theremin, produced by Bob Moog and Shirleigh Moog, with her sister Nadia on piano. In 2006 Clara Rockmore's Lost Theremin Album followed.

Influence

Rockmore stressed mastery of body and emotion. In her view you had to hit not just a note but the centre of it, and you must not sway or shake, because that would change the tone. Her classical training gave her a purity of intonation that few other thereminists had. She showed that an electronic instrument can sound as singing as a violin.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• 1977The Art of the Theremin
• 2006Clara Rockmore’s Lost Theremin Album

Mentioned in other articles

• Theremin TechnologyClara Rockmore played classical music on it.