When I was a baby, my dad [Jan Bilk] and his bandmate [Tomas Nawka] took me to their concerts. They were called Servi Pacis [later just Servi] and they played electronic music in churches in the GDR, which was very rare and adventurous for the time, because they got all their instruments from the West.

Surrounded by synthesisers and sequencers, it was only natural for me to start playing the piano when I was five. I took up the violin a year later.

In 1995, they bought a Big Briar 91A Theremin, which looked a bit like the very old RCA Theremins that were built in the 1920s.

Carolina Eyck playing the theremin. Photo supplied

It was a new model from Robert Moog, so they brought it home, tried it out and figured, “This isn’t easy to play and it’s not going to work for us.” I just remember it sitting there on the living room table, and I gave it a try.

I was only seven, but I figured my way through it, and we started looking for a teacher.

The only one around was...