MAURIZIO
ERMAN
MANSUETI
Theremin the way I feel
by TIMELESS SONIC FACTORY
timeless sonic factory
theremin, the way I feel
concept
“Theremin, the way I feel” arises from an idea of the Italian musician ErMan to experiment the Theremin musical forms according to the structural aspects of contemporary music.
Maurizio Mansueti [ErMan] is among the prime movers in Italy to revaluate the Theremin since 1999. The Theremin is a very unique musical instrument. As in a sort Tai Chi dance, it is played by moving the hands in the air, around an invisible and, therefore, magic sound spectrum.
The Theremin takes its name from its Russian inventor, Professor Lev Sergeevič Termen, who patented the device in 1928. Today Moog Music manufactures performance-quality theremins. The instrument found great success in many sci-fi and horror B-Movies especially during the early 1950’s because of its tremolo and vibrato sound.
It is a “cult” electronic instrument and popular among avant-garde artists because the instrument itself has an esoteric stage presence.
On “Theremin, the way I feel” ErMan paints musically a narrative path, drawn on his reading of Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities. The conceptual idea is to transfigure the narrative works of some ErMan’s favourite artists in a musical form, as it was for “Pictures At An Exhibition" by Modest Mussorgskij inspired by paintings and drawings by Viktor Hartmann.
Therefore, “Theremin, the way I feel” represents a musical synthesis dedicated to some great works of Haruki Murakami, Italo Calvino, Paul Gauguin and William S. Burroughs.
The works chosen by ErMan for this recording are able to arouse a “meta-narrative” musical path in the listener.
Jazz, improvisation, exotica, avant-garde, contemporary music, minimal music’s loops are various types of sound research that carry the listener away in a unique flow, so esoteric and so impalpable, like only the Theremin music is able to create.
“Theremin, the way I feel” is a unique work with style. A music trip into the writing form following a jazz, modern and contemporary feel.
timeless sonic factory
theremin, the way I feel
murakami . calvino . gauguin . burroughs
Haruki Murakami
.Tokyo Blues [*]
.Dance dance dance
.All God's Children Can Dance
[*] featuring Giorgio Li Calzi
Tokyo. Stories about urban and youth love stories narrated by Murakami with a jazz feeling. A magical writing with a unique dreamlike transformation of reality trying to decipher forbidden and sorrowful love stories.
Stories re-interpreted by the theremin and explored with a jazz intimacy.
Italo Calvino
.Cities and desire
.Cities and eyes
.Continuous cities
Continuous cities with never ending borders, cities for eyes able to see invisible stories, cities of desire able to irradiate colors in your mind.
A Philip Glass approach to the art of repetition, minimal music and technology supporting an oneiric trip into the most important hypertext of the XX° century.
Paul Gauguin
.Noa Noa
.And the Gold of their Bodies
.The Moon and the Earth [**]
[**] featuring Stefano Micarelli
Tahiti. After reading of Noa Noa by P. Gauguin, ErMan started the idea to play a virtual path of “exotica” music (so dear to 1950’s artists as the thereminist Samuel Hoffman) inspired by the feelings of Paul Gauguin paintings.
The nights of Tahiti, the sparkling colours of the Polynesian Isles, the Maori women narrated by the theremin with jazz exoticism.
William S. Burroughs
.Naked Theremin [***]
.Tangeri
.Naked Theremin - Instrumental
[***] featuring Steve Piccolo
Tangier. Morocco. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch was written in Tangier.
Naked Theremin draws a lunar landscape without gravity on which flows the Dr. Benway’s storyline.
A music path without gravity: obscure, electric and jazz like some Burroughs’ cut-ups.
Steve Piccolo (musician - New York, USA). One of the best musicians from the avant-garde New York no-wave jazz scene of the 1980’s. He founded the group The Lounge Lizards together with John and Evan Lurie, Arto Lindsay and Tony Fier. A long career with many albums. Today, he teaches “Sound Design” courses at Accademica Carrara (Bergamo, Italy) and he performs as a performance and sound artist on many multimedia events in Europe and USA.
Stefano Micarelli (electric guitar player – Rome, Italy). Well-known guitar player and music producer. A career with many albums and collaborations with Italian jazzmen (Massimo Urbani, Valter Martino, Massimo Manzi, etc…) and American artists (Mike Mainieri, George Garzone, Benny Maupin, Harvie Swartz and Eddie Henderson, etc...). He collaborates with book publishers as Arcana and monthly magazines as Chitarre. He teaches guitar didactics.
Giorgio Li Calzi (trumpet player – Turin, Italy). One of the best Italian jazz talents. His discovery of the trumpet coincided with meeting Enrico Rava, his teacher during the early '90s, who convinced Giorgio to become trumpet player. In 1990, Li Calzi won in Roma the award for the best European composer at the Competition for Young Jazz Talents (RAI/Ives St. Laurent). Today he is a music producer and he composes also music for cinema, theatre, dance and advertising.
timeless sonic factory
theremin, the way I feel
special guests
timeless sonic factory
theremin, the way I feel
music instruments
Timeless Sonic Factory is born at the Transistors lab, the atelier of the ideas of ErMan and his memorable band The Transistors.
Unusual musical instruments and toys are combined with technology, creating new music experiments.
Etherwave® Pro Theremin (Moog Music)
Professional Theremin of the Etherwave series by Moog Music.
The invisible waves of this instrument brings artist and spectator together in a level of perception really impalpable but tangible.
Virtual instruments (laptop music)
The ideal type of music instruments for modern artists.
Complete electronic instrumentation in a box that travels with the musician/producer. The perfect instrument for sound designers.
Tenori-On (Yamaha). Created by the media artist Toshio Iwai, Yamaha defines Tenori-ON as “the new digital musical instrument for the 21st century”. A 16x16 matrix of LED switches allows the artists to play music intuitively, creating a "visible music" interface. A completely new concept of playing and composing music in a portable device.
Music Toys
The Casio-Tone (mini-keyboard and calculator from 1980’s), the Stylophone (the first little monophonic synth from 1960’s; well-known because it was played on Space Oddity by David Bowie) are only two among many music toys revaluate today because of their high level of technology that they have.
And finally, the KORG DS-10, a micro-synth on Nintendo DS platform with all the original sound of Korg MS-10 (1975). A real micro-synth, not a game.