Cameron Carpenter | |
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 Cameron Carpenter photographed by Oliver Mark, Berlin 2012 | |
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Taylor Cameron Carpenter |
| Born | April 18, 1981 |
| Occupation | Organist |
| Instrument | Organ |
| Labels |
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| Website | cameroncarpenter |
Taylor Cameron Carpenter [1] (born April 18, 1981) [2] is an American organist and composer. [3] [4] In 2009, he became the first organist to ever be nominated for a Grammy Award for his solo album, Revolutionary. [5]
Taylor Cameron Carpenter was born in the state of Pennsylvania, United States.
He attended high school at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and has bachelor's and master's degrees from the Juilliard School in New York, [6] having studied with Gerre Hancock, John Weaver, and Paul Jacobs. Though he is not religious, [7] Carpenter was from 2008 to 2009 the artist-in-residence at Middle Collegiate Church [7] in New York's East Village, where he played a four-manual electronic organ that he designed for the broad-ranging music of that church. Carpenter ended his residency in July 2009.
In early 2008, the Telarc record label signed Carpenter to an exclusive five-album recording contract. His Telarc debut album, Revolutionary, was recorded as a CD and DVD at Trinity Church Wall Street in New York City and released September 23, 2008. [7] The title comes from Carpenter's transcription of Chopin's "Revolutionary Etude". The album made Carpenter the first organist ever to receive a Grammy nomination in the category 'Best Solo Instrumental Performance' (without orchestra) for a solo album. His first commercial album was a 2006 CD/DVD, Pictures at an Exhibition, on SeeMusicDVD. It includes his arrangement of the programmatic piano work by Modest Mussorgsky, and his own improvisatory "New York City Sessions". Visuals for the Mussorgsky were created by Marshall Yaeger and his Kaleidoplex. The recording was made at Trinity Church, New York.[ citation needed ]
An "early" recording, made in 2005 and financed by the Allen Organ Company, was titled notes from the underground. This recording was a highly unusual project for Allen, as Carpenter was given near-complete artistic control of the album, selection of the program, and even oversight of graphic design (featuring location shots of Carpenter at famous New York City graffiti sites). This album was not reissued by Allen and is now a rarity. [8]
On June 1, 2010, Telarc issued in the U.S. a two-disc set with a CD carrying a J.S. Bach recital that had been recorded live at a recital he played in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in New York City. [9]
On August 26, 2014, Sony issued the DVD If You Could Read My Mind, containing performances and commentary by Carpenter recorded on an electronic touring organ. [10] [11]
Carpenter has been both criticized by some and praised by others for his unorthodox interpretations of the standard organ repertoire. Registrations rarely follow those suggested by the composer, and Carpenter often takes dramatic liberties in articulation. Carpenter is also noted for his advocacy of the digital organ, particularly development of a touring electronic organ, citing factors [12] such as the obstacles the pipe organ imposes on the ability of a traveling performer to enjoy an ongoing relationship with a single instrument in the same manner as many other instrumentalists. Despite this, he frequently performs on pipe organs, often garnering major exposure for the instrument. [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19]
He designed and commissioned the International Touring Organ (ITO), Opus 8 of the Marshall and Ogletree company, a one-of-a-kind, customized, "full-scale portable organ sonically tailorable to any acoustic environment", which took ten years and cost $2 million to build. [20] [21] Since its premiere in March 2014, [22] he no longer has to learn a new instrument for every performance which he characterized as maddening, [23] and he now tours worldwide to venues that have never had an organ. [21] [24] The story of the ITO is the subject of the 2015 documentary "The Sound of My Life". [25]
On March 18, 2014, Carpenter, arriving at Birmingham Airport for a performance at Birmingham Symphony Hall the following day, was refused permission to enter the United Kingdom by the British Border Force which applied immigration rules for visiting foreign artists. He returned to Britain the following day, and after a short detention at the airport, performed a reduced version of his planned recital. The House of Lords initiated an inquiry with the Home Office which determined that Carpenter lacked the required sponsor's certificate and that no mistreatment occurred, though it conceded that "Although the guidelines and policies were correctly followed by officers, Border Force accepts that more could have been done to assist Mr Carpenter." [26] [27]
Carpenter has been identified as bisexual. [28] In a New York Times interview, it was reported, "Mr. Carpenter... describes his sexuality as 'radically inclusive'". [1]
The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurised air through the organ pipes selected from a keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre, volume, and construction throughout the keyboard compass. Most organs have many ranks of pipes of differing pitch, timbre, and volume that the player can employ singly or in combination through the use of controls called stops.
Virgil Keel Fox was an American organist, known especially for his years as organist at Riverside Church in New York City, from 1946 to 1965, and his flamboyant "Heavy Organ" concerts of the music of Bach in the 1970s, staged complete with light shows. His many recordings made on the RCA Victor and Capitol labels, mostly in the 1950s and 1960s, have been remastered and re-released on compact disc in recent years. They continue to be widely available in mainstream music stores.
Rodgers Instruments Corporation is an American manufacturer of classical and church organs. Rodgers was incorporated May 1, 1958 in Beaverton, Oregon by founders, Rodgers W. Jenkins and Fred Tinker, employees of Tektronix, Inc., of Portland, Oregon, and members of a Tektronix team developing transistor-based oscillator circuits. Rodgers was the second manufacturer of solid state oscillator-based organs, completing their first instrument in 1958. Other Rodgers innovations in the electronic organ industry include solid-state organ amplifiers (1962), single-contact diode keying (1961), reed switch pedal keying for pedalboards (1961), programmable computer memory pistons (1966), and the first MIDI-supported church organs (1986).
A pedalboard is a keyboard played with the feet that is usually used to produce the low-pitched bass line of a piece of music. A pedalboard has long, narrow lever-style keys laid out in the same semitone scalar pattern as a manual keyboard, with longer keys for C, D, E, F, G, A, and B, and shorter, raised keys for C♯, D♯, F♯, G♯ and A♯. Training in pedal technique is part of standard organ pedagogy in church music and art music.
Bradford Cathedral, or the Cathedral Church of St Peter, is an Anglican cathedral in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, one of three co-equal cathedrals in the Diocese of Leeds alongside Ripon and Wakefield. Its site has been used for Christian worship since the 7th century, when missionaries based in Dewsbury evangelised the area. For many centuries it was the parish church of St Peter and achieved cathedral status in 1919. The cathedral is a Grade I listed building.
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Frederick Lewis Swann was an American church and concert organist, choral conductor, composer, and president of the American Guild of Organists. His extensive discography includes both solo organ works and choral ensembles he has conducted.
Carol Anne Williams D.M.A., ARAM, FRCO, FTCL, ARCM is a British-born international concert organist and composer, now residing in America. She served from October 2001 and resigned her post in October 2016 as Civic Organist for the city of San Diego, California, performing regularly at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion. She was concurrently serving as the artistic director of the Spreckels Organ Society; producing the largest organ festival in North America since 2001. She was formerly the Artist in Residence at St. Paul's Cathedral San Diego.
Thomas Mantle Murray is an American organist, known as an interpreter of Romantic organ music. He was a professor of Music and university organist at the Yale School of Music from 1981 until his retirement in 2019. He is also Principal Organist and Artist in Residence at Christ Church in New Haven, Connecticut.
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Cameron Carpenter's (BM '04, MM '06, organ)
Carpenter told us he is on a bit of a mission to transform the way people think about organists and their instruments.
Having arrived from Berlin at 10:30 pm on Monday for the latest leg of a 31-date global tour, Mr Carpenter says he was escorted onto the next flight back to Germany at 7 am ....
Investigation finds no mistreatment of virtuoso ... who was detained overnight and sent back to Berlin.
Media related to Cameron Carpenter at Wikimedia Commons
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