Cameron 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. Cameron 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, Cameron’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, he 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 piano works by Chopin, Godowsky, Grainger, Ives, Liszt, Medtner, Rachmaninoff, Schumann, and others. Cameron received a Master’s Degree from The Juilliard School in New York in 2006.