CAMERON CARPENTER

"Cameron Carpenter – “the most controversial organist alive” (Dallas Morning News) – is “one of the rare musicians who changes the game of his instrument” (The Los Angeles Times) with performances that are “alternatingly dazzling and subtle, and always fired by a profound musical intelligence” (The Wall Street Journal). Cameron challenges the ways in which the organist is promoted and the organ is played. His repertoire includes the complete organ works of Bach, Franck and Liszt, but he has adapted more than 200 works not for the organ: from the piano music of Liszt and Rachmaninoff to Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, to music from animé and film (Howl’s Moving Castle, Spirited Away, and scores by John Williams and Bernard Herrmann), and re-imaginings of songs by Kate Bush, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Annie Lennox. Bringing increased physicality to the organ as a former dancer, his supervirtuosic organ transcriptions of Chopin Études have led to comparisons as diverse as Vladimir Horowitz and Fred Astaire. Cameron’s embrace of fashion on the concert stage includes concert wear of his own design. His original compositions are published by Edition Peters. Cameron was a child prodigy who performed Bach's complete Well-Tempered Clavier at age 11 before touring as a boy soprano with the American Boychoir for two years. He graduated from The Juilliard School in 2006 and lives in Berlin with his cat, Kittyball."