Pamelia Kurstin

Performing on the theremin, Pamelia Kurstin shares with the TED Talks Forum a new take on "Autumn Leaves", "Lush Life" and David Mash’s "Listen, Words Are Gone."

You may not know of Pamelia Kurstin, but she has been performing for many years and has created for herself quite a critically-acclaimed career. Her album "Thinking out Loud" was released in April 2007 and has been reviewed as being "a doozy of weirdness" as well as "haunting and quirky." Personally, I recommend "Thinking out Loud" because of its uniqueness as a "contemporary theremin" album (you'd be hard pressed to find another such album in the last forty years). The dark tones and exceptional use of pitch are evident in my favorite tracks, "Edinburgh" and "Copingheaven".

The Theremin is a monophonic electronic instrument developed in the USSR by Lev Termen and first demonstrated by him in 1920. It operates on the principle of heterodyning two radio frequency oscillators and is customarily played by moving the hands to-and-fro in mid-air before two antennae, one controlling pitch, the other volume. There are also versions with a keyboard or a fingerboard. (definition from Answers.com)