There’s a popular YouTube video of Cameron Carpenter in which the organist performs his arrangement of Chopin’s “Revolutionary” Etude. The piece is difficult enough to play in its original piano version, which keeps the left hand busy swooping up and down the keyboard while the right hand tolls out the ominous melody. On the organ, the work becomes pure choreography, a ballet for hands and feet that spans the instrument’s pedals and multiple keyboards, called manuals.
Clad in an all-white outfit dripping with sequins, Cameron zooms through the Etude with seemingly effortless confidence and musicality. Even on the computer screen, the performance is enthralling, a blend of technical fireworks, emotional intensity, and punk rock swagger.
This is the world that the 33-year old Juilliard graduate inhabits, a universe where the organ is freed from the relatively staid and conservative trappings that have surrounded it for centuries. Carpenter’s flamboyant style — which extends from his playing to his taste in fashion — will likely be on display on Friday during the organist’s solo recital at Benaroya Hall.
For the April 25 concert, Carpenter performs a unique program on the massive Watjen Concert Organ, which looms over Benaroya’s main auditorium. The setlist includes several classic works for organ as well as Carpenter’s own arrangements and improvisations. Hear Bernstein’s colorful Overture to Candide come to life on the organ as well as an arrangement of Liszt’s darkly virtuosic piano work Funérailles.
Since graduating from Juilliard in 2006, Carpenter’s successful touring career has brought him to organs around the world. As he traveled from city to city, encountering a completely different instrument in each new locale, Carpenter became acutely aware of the limitations of these organs and the restrictions they placed on the player.
“Those instruments are subject to the institution,” he explains. Even the greatest organs in the world are still constrained by the rise and fall of the churches and concert halls that house them. They’re expensive and impractical to maintain. For a touring soloist, the inconsistencies between instruments are inconvenient at best and musically restrictive at worst.
Enter Carpenter’s mission to create what he calls his “dream machine”, a portable performance organ built exactly to his specifications. Dubbed the International Touring Organ, the instrument was created for Carpenter by Massachusetts-based organ builders Marshall & Ogletree. The digital organ comes with its own specialized sound system and can be transported in a single truck.
Carpenter’s grand plans for his new instrument are already well underway. He’s recorded an entire new album on the International Touring Organ. Called If You Could Read My Mind, the record brings together a medley of traditional and sensational pieces designed to show off the instrument’s range. Last month, the organ made its concert debut at New York’s Lincoln Center. Now it’s on its way to Europe for an inaugural tour, with debut performances in the US scheduled for autumn of this year.
“The International Touring Organ is one of the only organs ever to be built with the intention of being played by a single person,” Carpenter declares proudly. Though his willingness to embrace innovation and change has won him fans in the organ world, he’s gained critics as well, especially in regards to his love for the digital organ. In response, Carpenter seems to distance himself from the insular organist community, which he describes as “conservative” and “exclusive”.
“It’s a commonly held tenet in the organ world that the organ itself is the point, when in fact it’s a tool,” Carpenter explains. Like all instruments, the organ is subject to changes in the world around it, including technological advancements. Carpenter sees his transition from traditional pipe organs to digital instruments like the International Touring Organ as a natural evolution. But he wonders if the organ community will be able to adapt.
“There’s a perceptible sort of new conservatism among young organists which to me is rather symptomatic of an institution in its threatened stages,” he notes. Conservatories and music schools continue to graduate organ students, who enter the workforce facing a scarcity of job opportunities. One strategy is to turn inward, building up a community that Carpenter compares to the academic ivory tower. Another tact is to embrace change and learn to march to the beat of one’s own drum.
For Carpenter, playing the organ isn’t about perpetuating musical tradition. It’s all about personal expression rather than trying to fit a mold. “I feel that what I have to do and the voice that I bring, whether it’s to the old machine at Benaroya Hall or my own dream machine, is so full of personality that you can’t get it anywhere else.”
Though he clearly loves the repertoire he plays, Carpenter doesn’t see himself as part of the classical music establishment. “Part of the miracle of classical music is simply letting it be music,” he says. To Carpenter, the classical repertoire is simply his chosen vehicle for personal expression. It’s a philosophy that’s helped him remain confident amidst cries that classical music is dying or in crisis.
“You don’t become an artist in the 21st century — particularly when your vision involves building a million dollar instrument and hauling it around the world — because you’re the sort of person who’s frightened by crisis and risk.”
