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Concert features performance by leading thereminist
21-Mar-08
FREDERICK, Md.--One of the country's leading thereminists will present a free concert and lecture April 8 at 8 p.m. in Hood College's Brodbeck Music Hall.
Charles Richard Lester of Los Angeles, along with several family members, will perform music from the film, "Spellbound," and several other concert pieces for theremin, as well as transcriptions by Rachmaninoff, St. Saens, Beethoven and others.
Lester, trained as a church musician, has performed for television and film soundtracks, CD recordings and video games, including the soon-to-be-released "Simpsons" title. Lester has appeared with the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra in Disney Auditorium, the Cincinnati Pops and will perform with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra next season. His many television appearances include "Good Morning America."
The theremin, comprised of electronic components that set up low-power, high-frequency electromagnetic fields around two antennas that control the instrument's pitch and volume, is viewed by musicians as the ancestor of electronic music. Invented by Russian physicist Leon Theremin in 1918, the instrument is unique in that it was the first musical instrument designed to be played without being touched; the performer moves his hands to alter the electromagnetic fields by varying their distances to the antennas.
For more information about Lester and the theremin, visit his Web site at www.137.com/theremin. For more information about this concert, contact Noel Lester, concert pianist and professor of music at Hood, at (301) 696-3429 or by e-mail at nlester@hood.edu.