Lydia Kavina

The famous theremin player Lydia Kavina enthrals audiences worldwide with her concert performances and interpretations of film scores. She has performed at renowned concert halls such as the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Sofiensäle in Vienna as well as at international festivals, and has collaborated with orchestras such as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de France and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra.

She has participated in numerous theatre productions, including Olga Neuwirth’s opera Bählaams Fest in Bochum, Hamburg, Lucerne and Vienna, Moritz Eggert and Jan Fabre’s music drama Tragedy of a Friendship in Ghent, Tom Waits and Robert Wilson’s musicals Alice and Black Rider in Hamburg and Cologne and Lera Auerbach and John Neumeier’s ballet Die kleine Meerjungfrau (The Little Mermaid) in Copenhagen, Hamburg, Beijing and Seoul. She has also performed for stage productions at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, the ZKM Karlsruhe and the Teatro San Carlo in Naples.

Her repertory as a soloist includes Lera Auerbach’s Ikarus, Charles Ives’s Symphony No. 4, Edgard Varèse’s Equatorial, Arthur Honegger’s oratorio Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher and Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony.

Among her most important recordings of film scores are Arthur Sharpe’s The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, Howard Shore’s Ed Wood and eXistenZ and the soundtrack to Roque Baños’s The Machinist. She performs the role of the theremin player in Wolfgang Becker’s film Me and Kaminsky.

Her discography includes several albums of original music for theremin, released on labels such as Deutsche Grammophon, Mode Records and WERGO.

Alongside her musical career she is deeply committed to theremin education. She founded the online ThereminSchool, gives masterclasses and has directed several theremin festivals in Europe, Russia and North and South America. The release of her 1994 video Mastering the Theremin (Moog Music) was a key moment in the worldwide renaissance of theremin art.

Lydia Kavina was born in Russia, and now lives in the United Kingdom. She studied music theory and composition at the Moscow Conservatory, and learnt the theremin under the direction of its creator, Léon Theremin, to whom she is related.