Clara Rockmore Collection

Clara Rockmore Collection

Rockmore, Clara

08-51-Rockmore

6.50 Linear Feet

1930-1980

1898-1996

Special Collections in Performing Arts

Special Collections in Performing Arts, Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742. Contact the curator: http://www.lib.umd.edu/scpa/contact

Clara Rockmore (1911-1998) was trained as a violinist and later became a premiere thereminist. She was born Klara Reisenberg in Vilna, Lithuania. By the age of four, she had enrolled in the St. Petersburg Conservatory to study with Leopold Auer. Later, after immigrating to the U.S. in the mid-1920s she met Leon Theremin and became an expert on the Theremin. She married the producer Robert Rockmore in 1933. Her sister was the pianist Nadia Reisenberg and her nephew the broadcaster Robert Sherman. (The Nadia Reisenberg Papers are held in IPAM and the Robert Sherman Papers are held in SCPA.) Much of the Rockmore collection documents her career as a thereminist during the 1930s and 1940s, although there are also items from her early childhood and late adult years. It includes reviews, articles, correspondence, writings, photographs, scrapbooks, books, and scores.

The collection is open for research use.

Clara Rockmore Collection, Special Collections, University of Maryland Libraries.

Materials from this collection must be used in the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library's Irving and Margery Morgan Lowens Special Collections Room, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, Monday through Friday. Contact the curator for an appointment: http://www.lib.umd.edu/scpa/contact

This collection is PROCESSED.A full finding aid is available.