leo theremin playing a, er, theremin. Res­id­ents of Island Bay, do not be alarmed. Those weird, spacey tones rever­ber­at­ing around your sub­urb next week will not be sig­nalling the impend­ing inva­sion of Wel­ling­ton by ali­ens, but will be, in fact, The Synth Birds of Dawn.

Loc­al composer/producer Nic McGow­an is co-ordin­at­ing a three-piece theremin ‘band’, who will be loc­ated one-a-piece on each of three hill-tops around the sub­urb to cre­ate…

…subtle creature-like elec­tron­ic tones [that will] softly res­on­ate across the val­ley; eer­ie and oth­er­worldly.

‘Synth Birds of Dawn’ will be per­formed using three vin­tage syn­thes­izers known as theremins. Theremins are a spe­cial instru­ment which can be played without being touched. Inven­ted in 1919 and one of the very first elec­tron­ic instru­ments, the theremin con­sists of a box with two pro­ject­ing radio anten­nas around which the user moves his or her hands to play. The sounds cre­ated are eth­er­e­al and highly express­ive.

‘Synth Birds of Dawn’ will be per­formed live from three hill­top loc­a­tions in Island Bay on Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 14th and Thursday, Feb­ru­ary 16th between 6.30 and 7.00am, and will have a dur­a­tion of approx­im­ately 30 minutes.

Synth Birds is part of the Island Bay Fest­iv­al, oth­er events we’ll be giv­ing a heads up on as they draw closer. Like the Ribble Street Soap­box Derby.