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.