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A thereminist is a musician that plays the electronic musical instrument called a theremin.

Main Article: Theremin

Lydia Kavina, protégée of Léon Theremin and instructor to other thereminists.

The theremin is performed as a solo instrument in classical music, and is occasionally used in jazz improvisation. Theremins are popular instruments among avant-garde and new music artists, as well as rock musicians, due to the continuous gliding pitch, which allows freedom from traditional compositional structures. It has also been extensively used to generate sound effects and "atmospheric" incidental music for flim and video soundtracks.

Composers

Concert composers who have written for theremin include Lera Auerbach, Bohuslav Martinů, Dmitri Shostakovich, Charles Ives,Percy Grainger, Christian Wolff, Joseph Schillinger, Alan Hovhaness, Edgar Varese, Moritz Eggert, Iraida Yusupova, Jorge Antunes, Vladimir Komarov, Anis Fuleihan and Dalit Warshaw.

The Russian Dmitri Shostakovich was one of the first composers to include parts for the theremin in orchestral pieces, including a use in his score for the 1931 film Odna. While the theremin was not widely used in classical music performances, the instrument found great success in many motion pictures, notably, Spellbound, The Red House, The Lost Weekend (All three of which were written by Miklós Rózsa, the composer who pioneered the use of the instrument in Hollywood scores), The Spiral Staircase, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing (From Another World), The Ten Commandments (the 1956 DeMille film).

A recent concert composition utilizing the Theremin is Lera Auerbach's ballet The Little Mermaid, a three hour production featuring the theremin as the mermaid's voice throughout. The Royal Danish Ballet commissioned Russian- North American composer Auerbach to make a modern rendition of this fairy tale. It premiered on April 15, 2005 with Lydia Kavina as the theremin soloist. Kavina also performed in Olga Neuwirth's opera Bählamms Fest (after Leonora Carrington's Baa-Lamb's Holiday), which premiered in 1999. Elizabeth Brown composed "Rural Electrification", a chamber opera for voice, theremin and recorded sound, as well as "Piranesi" for theremin and string quartet and "Atlantis" for theremin and guitar. The instrument also features in Constantine Koukias' large-scale experimental opera, Tesla - Lightning in His Hand, which opened Tasmania's 2003 10 Days on the Island Festival.

Instrumentalists

1920 to 1960

Lev Theremin himself was undoubtedly the original thereminist. His demonstration of the first working instrument in 1920 to a convention of engineers and physicists in Petrograd amounts to the first public performance on a theremin, followed shortly after by a command performance for V. I. Lenin at the Kremlin. Over the next few years Theremin staged a series of concerts sponsored by the Soviet government, culminating in the first symphony written for orchestra and theremin, "A Symphonic Mystery", by A. F. Paschtschenko premiering in May, 1924 by the Leningrad Philharmonic. In 1927, Theremin performed in Paris, London, Berlin and Frankfurt, arriving in New York city in December of that year, where he remained and continued to give public demonstrations, including a performance with the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra on August 27, 1928.

See main article: Leon Theremin

Konstantin Kovalsky, a conservatory trained violinist with a hand injury that prevented his playing the violin, was likely the next dedicated thereminist in history. In 1923 Kovalsky built his own variation of Theremin's design, with an additional foot pedal and buttons to control volume. He performed over three thousand concerts, many with Lev Theremin, around the USSR over the following fifty years.

thumb|left|Clara Rockmore Album Clara Rockmore (nee' Clara Reisenberg) was one of Theremin's first pupils in the USA. Like Kovalsky and many early thereminists, she started as a violinist. Rockmore's first theremin concert was in New York's Town Hall, on October 30, 1934. Rockmore toured extensively in the USA over the next twenty years, as a guest soloist with major symphony orchestras, including several performances with conductor Leopold Stokowski.

See main article: Clara Rockmore

Because of Clara Rockmore's professed distaste for such projects, the thereminist most commonly enlisted to perform anything from haunting melodies to eerie sound effects was Dr. Samuel Hoffman, whose performances can be heard most prominently in the soundtracks for Spellbound (1945) and The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).

Hoffman played with Les Baxter and was the only thereminist in the Los Angeles Musician's Union. He was referred to as "Doctor" because he was also a podiatrist.

Ronald Stein was a composer of soundtracks who also played theremin for movies such as The She Creature (1956) and the Queen of Blood (1966).

Theremins and theremin-like sounds started to be incorporated into popular music from the end of the 1940s (with a series of Samuel Hoffman/Harry Revel collaborations)

Actor Jerry Lewis plays a theremin briefly in the 1957 Paramount film The Delicate Delinquent. The latter part of the scene actually uses thereminist Samuel Hoffman in the soundtrack, to which Jerry Lewis mimes the motions of playing the instrument.

A theremin was not used for the soundtrack of Forbidden Planet, for which Louis and Bebe Barron built "disposable" oscillator circuits and a ring modulator to create the "electronic tonalities" for the film.

1960 to 1990

Contrary to popular belief, the theremin was not used on the 1966 recording of "Good Vibrations" by The Beach Boys, which featured Paul Tanner's "box", later called the electro-theremin. (However, for concert appearances, an oscillator slide-controller was designed and built for Wilson by Robert Moog.) Wilson helped to popularize the instrument when he recorded Paul Tanner playing his electro-theremin—for the first time in recorded music history—on the song "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times." The song appeared on The Beach Boys' 1966 album Pet Sounds, considered one of the most influential albums in popular music history.

Led Zeppelin leader and guitarist Jimmy Page played theremin in the 1969 song "Whole Lotta Love". The theremin is more noticeable on the 1976 live album The Song Remains the Same.

Dalit Warshaw, a student of Clara Rockmore, is a composer, pianist and thereminist who has performed on the instrument with such ensembles as the New York Philharmonic and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, among others. Works written for theremin by Dalit Warshaw have been performed at Lincoln Center, Steinway Hall and at the L.A. Philharmonic's Disney Hall.

Russian thereminist and composer Lydia Kavina is the niece of one of Léon Theremin's first-degree cousins and was Lev Theremin's protégé. Her repertoire consists primarily of classical and neo-classical compositions, many of which were written for the instrument. Many thereminists have studied under or played with Ms. Kavina, including German thereminists Barbara Buchholz and Carolina Eyck, English thereminists Bruce Woolley of The Radio Science Orchestra and Miss Hypnotique, and Japanese thereminist Masami Takeuchi.

The classic sci-fi anthology series The Outer Limits used the theremin in its 1964 season opening theme.

1990 to present

(refs to up-to-date music and players)

The release of the film Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey in 1993 sparked renewed interest in the theremin, and the emergence of new thermeinists, some with nontraditional playing styles.

In the United States, Pamelia Kurstin performs as a thereminist whose eclectic styles and innovations continue to expand the instrument's range. Her performances encompass the classical and jazz idioms, as well as in ethnic and avant-rock music with the band Barbez. More recently, the Armenian thereminist Armen Ra (also based in the United States) has promoted the instrument by performing popular, classical and Armenian music on the instruments. Other American performers of note include: jazz thereminists Eric Ross and Kip Rosser, Canadian singer-songwriter Peter Pringle, Charles Richard Lester, Michael Hearst, Rupert Chappelle, Dorit Chrysler, and Rob Schwimmer.

In Mexico Ernesto Mendoza has played the theremin in workshops, demonstrations and concerts. Cristian Torres has done similar work to promote the theremin in Chile.

The Lothars are a Boston-area band formed in early 1997 whose CDs have featured as many as four theremins played at once—a first for pop music.

Although credited with a "theramin" on the "Mysterons" track from album Dummy, Portishead used a monophonic synthesizer to achieve theremin-like effects instead.

More recent appearances in film scores include Monster House, Ed Wood, and The Machinist (both featuring Lydia Kavina). The DVDs for Ed Wood, Bartleby, and The Day the Earth Stood Still contain short features on the theremin. Robby Virus, the founder and theremin player of the band Project:Pimento, was featured on the soundtrack to the movie Hellboy (2004).

Bruce Woolley provided all the Theremin parts for "Storm" the title song of The Avengers movie and also the "Sound Of Music" sequence in Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge!

Philadelphia thereminist Howard Mossman provided the theremin music for Jens Lien's 2006 award-winning film The Bothersome Man using an RCA theremin.

Los Angeles-based thereminist Charles Richard Lester is featured on the soundtrack of Monster House and has performed the US premiere of Gavriil Popov's 1932 score for Komsomol—Patron of Electrification with the L. A. Philharmonic and Esa-Pekka Salonen in 2007.

(NOTE: ALL TEXT BELOW IS UNEDITED)

Throughout the theremin's use in film music from the 1940s to the 1960s, its sound was equated with the bizarre and alien.

In the 2007 biopic parody film Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Dewey Cox suggests to one of his band members that he open his mind, and learn to play the theremin. It comes at a time when Dewey is using LSD pretty heavily, and has been working on his "masterpiece" album which is one very long song with countless obscure instruments, a full symphony, a vocal accompaniment of indigenous Australians and a goat. The scene is a parody of Brian Wilson, the driving force of The Beach Boys and the album Smile.

• The American television show Weeds prominently featured a theremin in the 5th episode of the 5th season.
• Coloratura soprano Loulie Jean Norman imitated the sound and feel of the theremin for Alexander Courage's theme for the original Star Trek TV series. Soprano Elin Carlson sang Norman's part when CBS-Paramount TV remastered the program's title sequence in 2006.
• The British comedian Bill Bailey uses a theremin in many of his stage shows, including "Part Troll".
• The television situation comedy My Favorite Martian employed an electro-theremin (played by Paul Tanner) in its theme music composed by George Greeley. In addition, the instrument was used whenever Uncle Martin (Ray Walston) practiced his powers of levitation or raised his antennae.
• The British television series Midsomer Murders uses a theremin in its popular theme tune as well as in underscore, to add depth and melody. The theremin part is played by Celia Sheen.
• In May, 2007, the White Castle American hamburger restaurant chain introduced a television ad featuring a theremin performance by musician Jon Bernhardt of the band The Lothars.
• Steven from Wayside plays the theremin.

• In the novel Hannibal, Hannibal Lecter buys and plays a theremin as well as other musical instruments.
• A theremin is played at a wedding ceremony in the Herman Wouk novel Marjorie Morningstar
• The theremin is used as a literary device in "Constellations for Theremin" by Andrew Joron
• In the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Captain Beatty says "If the drama is bad, if the film says nothing, if the play is hollow, sting me with the theremin, loudly. I'll think I'm responding to the play when it's only a tactile reaction to a vibration. But I don't care. I just like solid entertainment."

• Composer Garry Schyman used a Theremin for the musical score of the 2005 videogame Destroy All Humans!
• Lydia Kavina's solo theremin is featured on the soundtrack for the 2006 MMORPG computer game Soul of the Ultimate Nation, composed by Howard Shore.
• The Homestar Runner universe character Homsar plays a theremin in the 2008 point-and-click adventure game Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People - Episode 3: Baddest of the Bands.