Program Notes: Cameron Carpenter and the International Touring Organ

MARCH 19 CAMERON CARPENTER AND THE INTERNATIONAL TOURING ORGAN SUNDAY March 19, 2017 – 7:30pm organ Cameron Carpenter A CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES SPECIAL CONCERT

All performances at the Jacobs Music Center's Copley Symphony Hall

PROGRAM RICHARD WAGNER/ Arr. Cameron Carpenter ASTOR PIAZZOLLA JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH LOUIS VIERNE

ALEXANDER SCRIABIN/ Arr. Cameron Carpenter

Overture to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, WWV 96

Oblivion Art of Fugue BWV 1080: Contrapunctus IX Naiades Carillon de Westminster Sonata No. 4 in F-sharp Major I. Andante II. Prestissimo volando

INTERMISSION JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH / Arr. Cameron Carpenter et al.

LESLIE BRICUSSE/ Arr. Cameron Carpenter SELECTIONS BY: MANCINI, WALLER, GERSHWIN JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor BWV 565

Pure Imagination

Improvisations in Diverse Styles

Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582

Note: program is subject to change.

P24 PE RFORMA NCES MAG A Z IN E

SAN DI E GO SYM P H O N Y O R C H E ST R A 2 016 - 17 S E AS ON MAR CH 2017

ABOUT THE ARTIST

CAMERON CARPENTER AND THE INTERNATIONAL TOURING ORGAN - MARCH 19 piano works by Chopin, Godowsky, Grainger, Ives, Liszt, Medtner, Rachmaninoff, Schumann and others. Mr. Carpenter received a Master’s Degree from The Juilliard School in New York in 2006.

CAMERON CARPENTER, ORGAN

C

AMERON CARPENTER is having a ball smashing the stereotypes of organists and organ music – all the while generating worldwide acclaim and controversy. His repertoire – from the complete works of J. S. Bach to film scores, his original works and hundreds of transcriptions and arrangements – is probably the most diverse of any organist.

He regularly appears as a soloist with many of the world’s great orchestras, and signed in 2013 an exclusive multi-album recording contract with Sony Classical. Mr. Carpenter launches his International Touring Organ – a monumental digital organ of his own design, playable throughout the world – with two Lincoln Center concerts on March 9, the release of the Sony album If You Could Read My Mind on March 3, and a 31-concert tour to Europe, the USA and the UK. A virtuoso composer-performer unique among keyboardists, Mr. Carpenter’s approach to the organ is smashing the stereotypes of organists and organ music while generating a level of acclaim, exposure, and controversy unprecedented for an organist. His repertoire – from the complete works of J. S. Bach and Cesar Franck, to his hundreds of transcriptions of non-organ works, his original compositions, and his collaborations with jazz and pop artists – is perhaps the largest and most diverse of any organist. He is the first organist ever nominated for a Grammy® Award for a solo album.

As a keyboard prodigy, Mr. Carpenter performed Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier at age 11 before joining the American Boychoir School in 1992 as a boy soprano. During his four years of high school studies at The North Carolina School of the Arts, he made his first studies in orchestration and orchestral composition, and transcribed for the organ more than 100 major works, including Gustav Mahler’s complete Symphony No. 5. Cameron continued composing after moving to New York City in 2000 to attend The Juilliard School. While at the School he composed art songs; the symphonic poem Child of Baghdad (2003) for orchestra, chorus and Ondes Martenot; his first substantial works for solo organ; and numerous organ arrangements of

The same year, he began his worldwide organ concert tours, giving numerous debuts at venues including Royal Albert Hall, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Melbourne Town Hall, Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow, Davies Hall in San Francisco and many others. His first album for Telarc®, the Grammy®-nominated Revolutionary (2008), was followed in 2010 by the critically acclaimed full length DVD and CD Cameron Live! Edition Peters became his publisher in 2010, beginning the ongoing release of his original works with Aria, Op. 1 (2010). His first major work for organ and orchestra, The Scandal, Op. 3, was commissioned by the Cologne Philharmonie (KölnMusic GmbH) and premiered on New Year’s Day 2011 by the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie under the direction of Alexander Shelley. Of Cameron the composer, Die Welt’s Manuel Brug writes: “Carpenter…is proving himself to be a clever eclecticist, who understands to entertain with much finesse, and admits with a wink that he is ‘annoyed by intellectual music.’”

Mr. Carpenter is one of the only performing artists to make a practice of meeting his audience in person before his performances – often spending over an hour before each concert shaking hands and signing autographs on the floor of a concert venue.

With combined millions of hits on YouTube and numerous television, radio and press features including CNN’s “The Next List,” CBS Sunday Morning, BBC Radio 3, ARD, ZDF, NDR Kultur, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal and many others, he is the world’s most visible organist.

Cameron Carpenter appears by arrangement with Columbia ARTISTs Music, LLC. Mr. Carpenter records exclusively for SonyClassical. n

T

rue to its name, Cameron Carpenter’s INTERNATIONAL TOURING ORGAN isn’t stationary. Since its debut last year, it has become Carpenter’s instrument of choice, quickly eclipsing the pipe organ. “It’s where my heart lies,” he says.

The International Touring Organ is the eighth organ by Marshall & Ogletree, the Needham, Massachusetts organ builders redefining the digital organ as an instrument of artistic significance. Its concept is simple: innovate the relationship between organ and organist.

While the uniqueness of each pipe organ is part of its collective magic, this makes it impossible to perform the same music regardless of where the organist plays, as any violinist can do through a relationship

S AN DI EG O SYMPHO NY O RCHEST RA 2016- 17 SEA SO N MA RC H 2017

THE INTERNATIONAL TOURING ORGAN

of years with a single instrument. Therefore Marshall & Ogletree has sampled sounds from many traditional pipe organs, including many of Cameron’s favorite instruments – from the cathedral to the Wurlitzer. These come together in an organ designed not for size, limitless variety or to model any particular pipe organ, but rather to make a great organ internationally mobile – an idea impractical or impossible by other means. The true scale of its ambitiousness can be seen in its console and extensive touring sound system. These insure the organ’s consistency from venue to venue, both as the home instrument of the artist it was built for and an ultimate acoustical experience for the listener.

“One of the things that is so important about this touring organ, and one of its great trump cards – one of the things that the pipe organ can never provide – is a sense of psychological home,” Carpenter says. “I can call up sounds from the organ that in some sense first made me want to do what I’m doing.” The entire organ assembles in less than three hours and travels in a single large truck; identical European and American sound systems (housed in Berlin, Germany and Needham, MA) make it internationally mobile. Its sound system is a massive complex of specially sourced sound support and amplification equipment housed in mobile, location-adaptable touring cases. The organ console is assembled manually and hydraulically from only six modular parts, and like the sound system, travels in purpose-built robust touring cases.

A maverick in the traditional world of organ building, Marshall & Ogletree shot to prominence in 2003 with their Opus 1 at Trinity Church Wall Street in New York City, a landmark organ controversial for having replaced the former Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ damaged by debris on September 11, 2001. Uniquely among organ builders, the firm’s principals are also acclaimed organists – Douglas Marshall, a competition-winning former student of Virgil Fox, and David Ogletree, a Curtis Institute graduate. Learn more at www.marshallandogletree.com. n

P E R FOR M AN C E S M AGAZ I NE P25