Cameron has hordes of passionate fans that range from students of classical to indie, alternative and rock listeners, from educated professional couples and music savvy erudites to rebellious teens and followers of the Gothic suburban culture.
It seems that the secret is in the mix, as stereotypes are exactly what Cameron is very much helping to destroy.
1. MDM_ Cameron, thank you very much for taking the time for this interview. You are originally from northwestern Pennsylvania and, as we mentioned earlier in our introduction, were home-schooled until the age of 11, when you started to attend the American Boychoir School in Princeton, New Jersey. Was home-schooling a decision made by your parents based on preference and principles, or was it an unavoidable consequence of living in a rural location?
1. CAMERON_ Thankfully I think principles, at least the principles that now seem to be embodied by the homeschooling movement in America, were never part of my family or my experience. I’m still surprised today to discover that homeschooling – instead of being the happily open-minded, rather hippified liberal experience that it was for me, and which permitted me the expressive freedom that I needed – is now a basically fundamentalist, isolationist, and therefore questionable institution employed by people who try to shelter their children from the world. Similarly I wouldn’t say that it was unavoidable, indeed it certainly would have been easier for them to send me down the road to the local public school, but I think they knew this wasn’t an appropriate solution in my case, and that a, shall we say, different approach was justified.
2. MDM_ You gave your European debut as an organist shortly after leaving the School at age 13. You must have been asked this question a thousand times by now but…how is that you chose the organ as your preferred instrument?
2. CAMERON_ My father is an engineer who built industrial furnaces for heat-treating applications, and as an obsessive-compulsive child I would play with their control panels by the hour, developing a love for tactile control systems. When I then saw a picture in an old Childcraft encyclopedia of a silent-movie organist from the 1920’s, I was deeply affected by the idea of a keyboard instrument that also incorporated these tactile controls (as the organ of course does), and to this day the closest I get to the mystical is the idea that a physical electric or electronic switch on an organ console is, by dint of its musical and therefore psychological impact, connected to the emotions of human beings.
I would not say that the organ is necessarily my preferred instrument, as a great deal of the time I have a hate-love relationship with it; I am passionate about it, though that passion can often be measured not by my love but by the fact that I return to it, despite the organ’s enormous problems, always. I think that perhaps the virtual pipe organ might be my preferred instrument. I hope that at 29 it is too early to tell, but already some shadows are visible.
Cameron Carpenter, picture supplied
3. MDM_ Did being acknowledged as a child prodigy make life easier or more difficult for you when growing up?
3. CAMERON_ There are of course some problems with jealousies encountered from others, but this is somewhat unavoidable regardless of being considered a prodigy. Still, I was lucky to not suffer the problems that seem to affect some. Later rewards, such as being able to coach and befriend several prodigies while at Juilliard, because of my life experience, far outweighed any negativity.
There are also several mental “secret weapons” which I retain, full-strength, from my “prodigy days” which have been an enormous help – for instance, in surviving my conservatory experience at Juilliard, where I was able to concentrate entirely on my own private work without having to expend energy on school activities, such as practicing for lessons or studying. There are of course much more noble and worthy applications for some of these secret weapons but, like most applications of secret weapons and the weapons themselves, they are classified.
4. MDM_ Your organ technique is widely regarded as unmatched, and you love pushing the limits of what is physically performable both on the organ and on the piano. This has been demonstrated time and again by your readings of Chopin’s Etudes and arrangements of virtuoso piano music. You do however have a broad musical taste that spans from classical to pop, folk and indie. What would you say are your main influences or favorites artists from a selection of music genres?
4. CAMERON_ I would bow to Tom Waits, Laura Nyro, Klaus Nomi, Kate Bush, and would nod to some of the notable obscurities that are again becoming fashionable (Jobriath, The Missing Persons, etc). The greatest direct influence on my music-making usually comes from cinema however, particularly the films of Werner Herzog, Hayao Miyazaki, Harmony Korine and others.
5. MDM_ Revolutionary includes your own composition, Love Song No. 1, which combines both delicate and unsettling registers to effectively take the listener through the highs and lows of a relationship. Your new album Cameron Live! Volumes 1 & 2 (a double album with a full-length DVD) was out on June 1st also includes some of your own compositions in addition to your arrangements of renowned classical pieces; however you also perform film scores, especially from Japanese animé. Will any of these be a focus for your original compositions in the future?
5. CAMERON_ It is difficult to determine from the question what you mean by “focus”; certainly my composing for solo organ will continue to examine the dynamic, profound expressive possibilities of the organ which, having rarely been turned to secular ends, represent for me a kind of hidden last frontier of composition – a sort of bubble not unlike the effect observable when rare buildings or commercial artworks are preserved because they are overlooked. I am at the moment at work on a major commission from the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, a big work for organ and orchestra, which I will premiere with them in Cologne on New Year’s Day. There are any number of other ideas to fulfill and many projects currently in progress – like the other two remaining Love Songs, and the publication of a number of ultra-virtuosic etudes and arrangements – which are gestating.
6. MDM_ Among other things, you have been called: “The Maverick Organist” by The New York Times (2006), “the Vladimir Horowitz of the organ” by the KOMMERSANT of Saint Petersburg, “the rock star organist” by MUSO Magazine, ‘the Jewel of Juilliard’, “the Michael Phelps of the music world” by the EDGE Boston, and “a magician” by the Portland Press Herald. Let´s flash-forward to the future; how would you really like to be remembered, Cameron?
<< BACK
|
|
Cameron Carpenter, picture supplied
6. CAMERON_ I do not deal with posterity in any way, i.e., I do not give a damn. In the case of the organ, the overbearing, usually unspoken, and misguided or even false concepts of duty, history, preservation, honor, “tradition” and other boring vanities have done great harm to the vitality of the instrument, its commercial viability, and the freedom and perhaps collective personality of its players. Also, it is not my job to address this question in my music making or even to have to think about it for one little minute, and it would be incredibly pretentious to do so – more pretentious even than I naturally am.
I would not find it unbelievable that somewhere in the Sohos of New York or London, a pale young man in a poet’s shirt was writing a symphony with a fountain pen, dreaming of how he would be remembered. I would find it unbelievable that the symphony was any damned good, though.
7. MDM_ As commented in our introduction, not only you are a virtuoso and a natural showman, but you also design organs and have engineered a virtual pipe organ, which extends the possibilities of this instrument to almost infinity. Could you tell our readers a bit about your innovations and the possibilities posed by this creation?
7. CAMERON_ The quickest way to understand it is to realize that it will retain, as an instrument, everything that is good about the pipe organ – its huge range of volume and dynamic expression, its vast palette of tone colours, its three-dimensional sound space, its earth-shaking innuendos – and will cheerfully discard everything that is bad about the organ – its immovability, its inability to adapt to individual artists, its enormous, increasingly unconscionable cost, its inability to provide an ongoing relationship with one touring artist which the violinist or flutist or guitarist or even drummer enjoys. It will expand the musical range of the organ, give me many more musical possibilities, and make it possible for me to play anywhere – not just in concert halls and buildings with organs, but in the important places where music is made without a thought given to the pipe organ.
Those are, after all, the places in which they understand that music must be taken to the people. This is a lost concept amongst organbuilders, organists, and the like – but it is really they who are lost, in that their very craft seems to physically symbolize an expectation that people will come to where the organ is. This is a 19th century ideal and long since departed from by the rest of the world, but that’s the organ scene for you: usually looking forward to the past.
8. MDM_ Your pedal technique shows as much prowess in your feet as you have in your fingers. You also design your footwear for your performances to enhance optimal movement, which once again demonstrates your limitless capacity for practical invention. You also have a talent for visual creativity and like to express it in your shows both with your attires and with the use of theatrical make-up. The first time I saw some of your video clips and photographs, David Bowie came to my mind. Do you think that if having debuted in the 70´s instead of the 21st Century, your visual expression would have been less criticized and more celebrated?
8. CAMERON_ I couldn’t claim to know what might have happened in the 1970’s, but I do know that the technology that I require to make a show musical and artistic, and satisfying, did not then exist. I think to address the question in purely visual terms rather than invoking the necessary prerequisite, which is of course music and musical performance, would be to accept that somehow the visual expressions I undertake are ends in themselves. And they are not: like the organ itself, these are not an end, but a means to an end.
9. MDM_ You have been touring Europe, and now in June you are back in the States. Will you be back in Europe before the year ends? What other countries are you planning to tour in the coming year?
9. CAMERON_ I will be spending an increasing amount of time in Europe from August of this summer on, and from November to January will play in the important concert halls of Germany – the Berlin and Dortmund Philharmonies, the Laeishalle in Hamburg, the Cologne Philharmonie. I’m not giving up any ground in the USA, though. I think more interesting still will be the expansion made possible when the touring organ – which is really two identical touring organs, one based in New York and one in Berlin – becomes available, hopefully in about one years’ time.
10. MDM_ We would not like to end this interview without asking you about your commitment to musical outreach projects in high schools, and your solidarity work for UNAIDS. What mentoring are you offering at the moment, and with regards to UNAIDS, how did you get involved in their worldwide campaigns?
10. CAMERON_ I have not done enough with UNAIDS yet, but I’m honored to have been able to do what I have, namely, participating in the Aids2031 conference in Oslo, which was a mind-opening experience to say the least. I was invited there by Michel Sidibé, one of the United Nations’ undersecretary-generals, in fact the Undersecretary General for UNAIDS – and his colleague Vinay Saldanha. As to other mentoring, my Models of Excellence mentoring project for organ prodigies, which is administered by Anchor-International Foundation in New York, is now expanding to include my presence in Berlin, Germany.
Finally, I do have a strong wish to see the touring organ used not only in concert and recording and broadcasting, but also in outreach to schools and prisons. At least in America these two groups of people – young students and prisoners – receive about the same treatment when it comes to music and cultural exposure.
MDM_ Again, thank you very much for participating in this interview Cameron. The MDM team at Wonderlance is certainly honored, and we wish you all the best in what we think will be a long and successful career.
--- Edited by BEN MOSS for the MDM at Wonderlance ---
WATCH CAMERON's VIDEO CLIPS >>
CAMERON CARPENTER ´s WEBSITE >>
|
|
