HEAR JULIET SHAW’s COLLECTED MUSIC
Available for the First Time In Over 70 Years!
A concert pianist, teacher, and one among a scant handful of the first generation thereminists, Juliet Shaw’s performing career paralleled those of her contemporaries, Clara Rockmore, Lucie Rosen, Lennington Shewell, Alexandra Stepanoff, Samuel J. Hoffman and others.
Volumes 1 and 2 of Music in the Air, The Artistry of Thereminist, Juliet Shaw have been curated from hundreds of unreleased recordings of Juliet Shaw’s performances, a concertizing career spanning over 50 years. Each volume contains over an hour of music and each is accompanied by a 28-page booklet filled with rare photos and commentary.
Volumes 1 and 2 of Music in the Air are just the tip of the iceberg in the Juliet Shaw Legacy Collection. Her theremin, the 6.5 octave range instrument, custom built for Juliet Shaw by Leon Theremin himself, now resides at the Smithsonian, along with the rest of the collection – a massive assortment of hundreds of photos, programs, video, articles, audio recordings.
What People Are Saying About
Music in the Air:
The Artistry of Thereminist, Juliet Shaw
ajarvez
DAMN!!! This is amazing, easily the most important theremin release in decades, and an utter revelation. THANK YOU!!! I’m just in awe, and absolutely cannot WAIT for more!
jacque
Awesome, thank you so much! Lovely!
goodwerks
So great! Just looking at the booklet I get a sense of how much work went into this. I’m listening to “Summertime” as we speak. She’s legit! I’ll spread the word.
About the Juliet Shaw Legacy Project
The Juliet Shaw Legacy Project is made possible by the combined efforts of Sandra Shaw Murphy and thereminist, Kip Rosser. Its goals were threefold:
1) First and foremost the goal was to donate the entire collection, including Juliet Shaw’s theremin, to an institution – one willing to house the collection and exhibit it.
2) Before the collection could be donated, it was necessary to properly organize, archive and digitize the entire collection of materials. This consisted of hundreds of items of printed matter as well as dozens of hours of audio and rare video recordings.
3) The preservation of Juliet Shaw’s custom theremin.
The Project Begins
The vast living/main room at the Silvermine School of Music is where lessons and concerts have taken place since Juliet founded the school in 1939. It is filled with antiques, three grand pianos and there is room for an audience of 90 to 100 people. Juliet Shaw’s theremin stands in a far corner of the room.
The first meeting between Sandra Shaw Murphy, Karen Shaw and Kip Rosser took place in the summer of 2008. Rosser had requested the meeting out of sheer curiosity regarding Juliet Shaw after seeing her name mentioned in the acknowledgements section of a biography of Leon Theremin. At the time, details of her life and career were virtually unknown unless one somehow found oneself on the Silvermine School of Music’s web site (see finding Juliet Shaw)./p>
Rosser’s intent was to visit the school and, with permission, create a short video interview featuring the two sisters.” Rosser’s intent was to visit the school in order to learn more and, with permission, shoot a short video interview with the two sisters. Sandra and Karen were very welcoming, witty, and humorous. In addition to discussing the life and career of their mother, they shared a small box filled with some of their mother’s memorabilia, saying that were more materials “somewhere in the house.”
Just two weeks later, due to a series of mishaps and unforeseen circumstances, all of the photos and video footage Kip shot that day were lost. He apologetically informed Sandra and Karen about what had happened. They all spoke of scheduling another date, not knowing it would take another 14 years.
Somewhere around November of 2021, as Rosser was organizing his archives, he was working on an external hard drive and discovered that he had inadvertently saved fragments of the 2008 meeting in a wrong folder. Although all of the interview footage was still lost, Sandra and Karen’s demonstrations of Juliet’s theremin technique survived, along with some footage of the theremin. In April of 2022, Rosser assembled the footage, and while sending a link to Silvermine, he learned that Karen had passed away in 2019. Sandra, however, saw the footage, prompting her to ask that she and Rosser meet again. That new meeting took place in June of 2022.
When Rosser arrived, he was utterly overwhelmed. Instead of the small box of memorabilia from 2008, Sandra had unearthed hundreds of artifacts: dozens of envelopes, boxes and bags, stacks of newspaper articles, concert programs, photographs, video tapes, piles of sheet music, vinyl recordings, audio cassettes, boxes and boxes of reel-to-reel tapes, all scattered in piles and boxes.
By August, Sandra generously decided to entrust Rosser with this vast wealth of materials, all of which were to become the Juliet Shaw Legacy Collection. Rosser began the arduous process of sorting, organizing, classifying, archiving, and digitizing everything. Meanwhile, Sandra continued to discover much more in the months that followed.
Concurrent with amassing the collection and all it entailed, Sandra and Kip began a campaign to seek out and contact various prominent institutions that might be interested enough to consent to accepting a donation of the entire collection, including Juliet Shaw’s theremin.
By the second week in January, 2024, the Juliet Shaw Legacy Collection was complete. Six months later, almost two years to the day in June, the entire collection was accepted, donated and moved to the Smithsonian Institute.
