They turned drawings into symphonies and made black boxes sing.
Why were they never given their due? The maker of a new film, full of revealing archive footage, aims to put this rightWearing a black cocktail dress and a foil-bright silver headscarf, a woman stands in the corner of a drawing room performing The Swan by Saint-Saëns, while a group of men look on.
Although the scene has a sedate Edwardian air to it, this is actually 1976.
The woman whirls her red nails around a mysterious black box, making it sigh and lament, whisper and sing.
This is Clara Rockmore, the first virtuoso of the theremin, and her audience – all there to learn – includes Robert Moog, inventor of the synthesiser.A year later, aged 66, Rockmore would release her first album, recorded by Moog, 35 years after she made her concert debut on the instrument at New York’s City Hall,
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