Profile of Miquette, a Theremin Player
[Japanese Version HERE]

A pleasant Theremin

The first musical instrument in my life had been a tiny toy piano. I by myself started to play it so that my parents had soon found a piano teacher and a real piano for me. My father might have hoped me to learn the piano academically, because he himself did not have such an opportunity but taught himself in his youth, when it had not been popular to play the piano in Japan. Maybe, my father was happier than me when the upright piano had arrived at our home.

The music school I belonged to was dealing with many kinds of music. There I had come to know synthesizers. Also, I composed music on my own and made entries to the Junior Original Concert sponsored by YAMAHA. In the Junior High, I belonged to after-school clubs of an accordion ensemble and a chorus. In the High School, I was hooked into playing classical music on solo piano and sang in a Buddhism-temple chorus. In the University, I was singing and dancing in the University club members and played keyboards in various student bands. The club activity itself was Folk Song-oriented but many different kinds of music were performed there. It was good old, fun days. At the same time, I joined a fusion band called "Landscape", of which the band leader was Jun Yamamoto who sometimes plays piano accompaniment in my performance to date.

At the same, I have suffered with rheumatoid arthritis, which causes pain at all the joints of the body and at last it destroys them. Year by year, I have come to feel more pain and inconveniences in daily life and difficulty in performing keyboards live. I just tried DTM (Desk Top Music) a little but I still wished to play live in front of audience.
Then, Theremin came into my life. "There is a music instrument you don't have to touch." "If I do not touch it, it would not cause pain." Such rumors led me to a one-day (actually 20 minutes) lecture and I decided to import a theremin because I felt I could play it. That was year 2001, when the movie "Theremin" was released, many people started to learn theremin influenced by the movie, but I saw the movie much later :-)

In the lecture, the lecturer said me to sit down seeing I was using a Lofstrand crutch (elbow crutch) and he kindly lowered the instrument for me. Since then, I am playing in the current style, sitting on a chair at a lower-positioned theremin. At that time, I thought it would be difficult for me to learn theremin academically with my deteriorated wrist and fingers by the disease and limited in motion very much. Also, I was afraid that I did not have enough physical strength to commute frequently to the class using trains. As a conclusion, I had to teach theremin myself as my father did in his mastering the piano playing.

My handicap led me to the theremin. But playing theremin sometimes teaches me that I have the handicap. Training for theremin is as hard as for other musical instruments, and moving my body always gives me joint pains. I wish I could give up playing music but I could not. I cannot help breathing music in and out because I was brought up by the daemon named Music.

But I do not want to use my handicap as excuse. And I want to perform freely not limited by music categorizations. It is not important for me how it should be played or how you should play this music or that music. Theremin is a music instrument which enables us to express anything you have in mind without limitation.

I am focusing my performing activity on the Internet. I would be very glad that you let me know if you would like to play with a theremin. Please inform me any theremin performance job (including a performance job on a pre-recorded accompaniment).


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