Clara Rockmore was admitted to the St. Petersburg Conservatory at age four, studying violin under Leopold Auer before her family fled the Russian Revolution and reached the United States in 1921. As a teenager at the Curtis Institute, tendonitis in her bow arm, attributed to childhood malnutrition, permanently ended her violin career. This episode follows how that loss led her to Leon Theremin and his new electronic instrument, played entirely by moving the hands through electromagnetic fields around two antennas.

We look at how Rockmore refused to accept the theremin as it was, working with Theremin to expand its range from three octaves to five, make the volume antenna responsive enough for staccato, and lower the cabinet so audiences could see the performer. We cover her aerial fingering technique, the demand for total bodily stillness, her 1938 Town Hall concert, her 1977 album The Art of the Theremin produced by Bob Moog with her sister Nadia Reisenberg on piano, and her death in New York in 1998 at age 87.

• How absolute pitch and rigorous conservatory intonation training let her find notes in empty air
• Why she pressed her thumb and forefinger together in midair to anchor her vibrato
• Her coast-to-coast tours with Paul Robeson and appearances with major orchestras in New York and Philadelphia
• Why she turned down Leon Theremin’s marriage proposal and married attorney Robert Rockmore
• Her legacy today, from her restored RCA theremin in a Phoenix museum to a Google doodle and a Bill and Ted reference