Vincenzo Vasi - A Life Devoted to the Theremin

Vincenzo Vasi is one of the few Italian musicians who has set out to probe the potential of one of the strangest instruments in the musical landscape, the theremin. The only instrument in the world that can be played without any physical contact with the musician, the theremin creates its sounds through electromagnetic waves that intersect with the movements of the hands. With “Braccio elettrico”, an LP played entirely on theremin, Vincenzo Vasi reached a moment of great personal maturity — so much so that Cristian Scarola's Offset Records has decided to reissue it ten years after its original release.

Hi Vincenzo, it's a genuine pleasure to get to know you. Yours is such a varied career that it isn't easy to track down all your collaborations. Can you first tell us how your passion for music and your work as a musician began?

Hi Valerio, it's a pleasure to answer your questions. Let me start right away with my beginnings. I was born in 1964, the youngest of three brothers and a sister, all music lovers who'd listen to it at full volume at all hours… so as a child/young boy I found myself absorbing so much music that I wanted even more. And so, as a result, I went to a huge number of concerts, tagging along with my dad since I was quite young, about 10 years old or so. That's where my passion for music was born, and it follows that, in a sense, my musical career was born there too: because as a kid, with my brothers, we'd play together just for fun with guitar, tin cans and voices, until in 1981, at 17, right in the middle of the wave era, together with my brother Valerio, Roberto Bucci and Piero Mambelli, I founded Shaming Borsalino, my first real rock band. Then came Tondo and Ella Guru, N.O.R.M.A. and Angelica Festival, the trio Magneto, Gastronauti, Bassesfere, Tristan Honsinger, Capossela, Perfavore Sing, Qy Lunch, OoopopoiooO.

Your interviews often bring up your passion for the bizarre. Can you explain what you mean by that?

I mean things that are out of place, the OOPArts of everyday life, the twisting of a mental routine. I'd say "bizarre" alone isn't quite enough; I'd add Dadaist, surreal, dreamlike and dirty.

When did your interest in the theremin begin?

From the early 1990s onward I had developed and reshaped my listening habits, growing passionate about radical and extreme music alongside Burt Bacharach and all the film scores and their composers, right up to the sci-fi strand, where I started asking myself what that sound was that evoked the alien and the mysterious.

In '98 came my first approach to the instrument, leading up to the development of recent years.

Which musician made you realize that you too wanted to go down that path?

I honestly wouldn't know, because my relationship with the theremin was born without any intermediary, physical or virtual, that one could think of, but if I absolutely had to name someone, I'd say Clara Rockmore for tradition and Pamelia Stickney for innovation and experimentation.

From the very start I definitely went looking for the theremin in avant-garde productions, but back then it wasn't easy to access certain music, and the only records I found were really bad, so I ended up preferring Samuel Hoffman's exotica to contemporary works. Unfortunately, I'm sorry to say - and this remains just my modest opinion - I generally find that contemporary music (aside from Cage, who always goes beyond) performed with theremin is mostly cold and lacking in heart, and therefore in expression.

The simple fact that the first pressing sold out years ago could be reason enough for a reissue, and on top of that, listeners themselves wanted this just as much as I did. What's more, Cristian Scarola of Offset Records, in collaboration with Bologna Unesco City of Music, took charge of the project and, despite countless setbacks caused by the pandemic period, did an excellent job producing and pressing it in every format - LP, gatefold, CD digipak and cassette - with carefully crafted packaging full of illustrated inserts, so that everyone can finally satisfy any format preference, unlike the plain CD jewelcase version of back then.

Is there a "hauntological" side to your work? That is, do you try to bring out the ghost of a certain old music that never quite leaves our lives?

Certainly the instrument naturally lends itself to this poetic vision of yours, which I do share, but what I feel I'm doing is a creative journey, an attempt to innovate the way of writing for and performing on an instrument that's still largely unexplored, in order to then develop its various expressive forms.

Your passion for black-and-white science fiction is obvious - can you recommend two films? And two soundtracks?

They're not exactly science fiction, but here's what I'd recommend:

– "The Color of Pomegranates", by Georgian director Sergei Parajanov;

– "The Fabulous Baron Munchausen", a mixed-technique animated film by Karel Zeman.

Rather than naming two soundtracks, I'd rather list some of my favorite composers (there are far more than two) and the film scores they wrote:

– Ennio Morricone – La Tenda Rossa – Il Clan dei Siciliani

– Howard Shore – Crash – Ed Wood

– Danny Elfman – almost all of Tim Burton's films – Family Dog

– Nino Rota – Il Padrino – Federico Fellini's Il Casanova and almost all of his films

– John Barry – The Persuaders!

– Lalo Schifrin – Bullitt – Mission: Impossible

– Barry Gray – UFO – Space: 1999 – Stingray

– Piero Umiliani – Smog – Big Deal on Madonna Street

– Piero Piccioni – La decima vittima

– Bernard Herrmann – Psycho – Vertigo

– John Carpenter – Escape from New York – They Live

On "Braccio elettrico" there's an interesting version of "Halloween", a tribute to director/musician Carpenter. Do you have a particular passion for him?

Actually, yes, though quietly. I like him a lot because he manages to make beautiful films with very little budget, which is also what I do in music, being independent and outside the majors and big budgets, just like him.

I also like him a lot because he composes his own soundtracks himself. From what I understand of him, he never tries to repeat himself, he's always looking for change.

What solo projects do you have coming up in the near future?

And I'm here to confirm your expectations, because for about a year now I've been bringing to my concerts part of a new repertoire of very tiny songs, called "Microcanzoni," little 30/60-second ditties. So, in my future there's a solo project for voice and looper that will take shape as a series of 45s.

And what about collaborations?

There are more than enough collaborations, so many that at times they distract me from what's truly mine. Besides the long-standing collaborations with Vinicio Capossela, Mike Patton, Ermanno Cavazzoni and Tristan Honsinger, who sadly left us just this year, in recent years there have been many others, perhaps quieter but just as valid, like Simon Hanes with Trigger or his orchestra 13 Bacci, Mauro Ottolini and the Sousaphonix, Fabrizio Puglisi and O.C.E.R., Stefano Ricci, and then with OoopopoiooO we're in good sync with the Chilean thereminist Martin Benavides and Inti Illimani Historico.

(11/02/2024)

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