Barbara Buchholz studied transverse flute, guitar, bass, and voice. In the early 1980s she was active as an instrumentalist, performer, and composer in countless interdisciplinary projects and as a theater musician. She received numerous prizes for her production “Tap It Deep” – “MIDI-fied” tap dance and music – as well as “Human Interactivity” and “Theremin: Berlin – Moskow” (together with the Russian video artist Olga Kumeger).
Barbara Buchholz studied theremin with Lydia Kavina in Moscow. The Thereminvox, which is played without being touched, and the MIDI theremin – built at Buchholz’s request, it controls a sampler via MIDI so that loops and samples are released into the air by hand movements – became the focus of her musical activity.
Together with Lydia Kavina she continued the interrupted tradition of this forgotten instrument and set off on new paths in the experimental fields of contemporary music.
Barbara Buchholz died of cancer on 10 April 2012.