With his extraordinary musicality and almost limitless technical skill, American organist Cameron Carpenter is one of the exceptional talents of the international music scene.
His pioneering spirit has already left its mark on recent music history: from 2014 until the start of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, he traveled to Australia, New Zealand and Asia as well as Europe and the USA with the International Touring Organ (ITO), which was built according to his own plans. In 2022, Carpenter's recording of J. S. Bach's “Goldberg Variations” was released on Decca together with his arrangement of Howard Hanson's 2nd Symphony “Romantic”. In 2019, he released Sergei Rachmaninoff's “Paganini Variations” and Francis Poulenc's Organ Concerto with the Konzerthausorchester Berlin under Christoph Eschenbach on Sony Classical, a recording that was awarded the OPUS KLASSIK 2020. Sony Classical also released the albums “All You Need is Bach” (2016) and “If You Could Read My Mind” (2013).
Cameron Carpenter was the first organist ever to be nominated for a GRAMMY for his album “Revolutionary” (2008, Telarc). Also released by Telarc is the album “Cameron Live!” (2010). In 2021, he recorded Miloslav Kabeláč's Symphony No. 3 for organ, brass and percussion for Deutschlandfunk Kultur together with the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Tomáš Netopil.
Cameron Carpenter can be heard in the 2024/25 season with concerts in St. Pölten, Luxembourg, Nuremberg and at several concerts in the USA, including as Artist in Residence at the La Jolla Music Society. He will also present his own organ arrangement of Mussorgsky's “Pictures at an Exhibition”.
Born in Pennsylvania, USA, in 1981, Cameron Carpenter performed J. S. Bach's “Well-Tempered Clavier” for the first time at the age of eleven and became a member of the American Boychoir School in 1992. Alongside his mentor Beth Etter, his teachers included John Bertalot and James Litton. At the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, he studied composition and organ with John E. Mitchener - during which time he transcribed over 100 works for organ, including Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 5. Carpenter's first compositions were written during his time at the Juilliard School in New York, where he was a student from 2000 to 2006.
Parallel to his studies at the Juilliard School, he received piano lessons from Miles Fusco. In 2011, his concerto for orchestra and organ “The Scandal”, commissioned by the Kölner Philharmonie, was premiered by the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, and in 2021 his concert overture for orchestra and organ “Great Expectations” with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.
In 2012, he received the Leonard Bernstein Award from the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival.