Biography
Pamelia Kurstin stands among the foremost practitioners of Léon Theremin’s singular instrument thanks to her singular “walking bass” technique, which opened up melodic and compositional horizons that few players have ever explored. Born Pamela Stickney in California on May 28, 1976, she first studied piano in childhood, then switched to upright bass during high school—an instrument she has continued to favor while also proving fluent on guitar, flute, saxophone, violin, and cello. She later transferred the same tactile sensibility and phrasing to the theremin, augmenting the instrument with an array of pedals and electronic processing. In 2000 she joined her then-husband Greg Kurstin in the theremin-and-keyboard trio the Kurstins, contributing to the album Gymnopedie. She next joined the Brooklyn-based ensemble Barbez and appeared on its third release, the 2005 album Insignificance. Her first solo effort, Thinking Out Loud, came out on John Zorn’s Tzadik Records in 2007.
Albums
