Carpenter Cameron

Born April 17, 1981, in Titusville, Pennsylvania, USA, he had his first piano and organ lessons at home and then with Elizabeth Etter at Allegheny College. Joining the American Boychoir School in 1993, he gave public performances in the U.S. and Europe with the School as chorister, accompanist and keyboardist, occasionally as soprano soloist; he did organ studies with Dr. James Litton and Dr. John Bertalot between 1993 and 1995. She then returned to home instruction and made her first organ arrangements between 1995 1996. He attended the North Carolina School of the Arts from 1996 to 2000.

He then attended the Juilliard School from 2000 to 2006, at which he earned first a Bachelor’s Degree in Music and Organ Performance in 2004 and then a Master’s Degree in Organ Performance in 2006. He meanwhile studies with masters Gerre Hancock, John Weaver, Paul Jacobs, Kendall Durelle Briggs, and Miles Fusco. In 2007 he signed his first recording contract with Telarc International and debuted with the album Revolutionary; designed the Marshall & Ogletree organ, Opus 4 installed at Middle Collegiate Church, New York, NY (unfortunately destroyed by fire in 2020).

In 2008 he is a guest of Vinicio Capossela. He becomes the first organist nominated for a GRAMMY Award for a solo album (for the album Revolutionary); in 2009 he signs a publishing contract with Peters Editions.

He moved in 2009 to Berlin. KölnMusik GmbH contacted him to write an organ concerto: it was the piece The Scandal, op. 3 later premiered in 2011 at the Cologne Philharmonic with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under the baton of Alexander Shelley. In 2011 he played as soloist with the YouTube Symphony at the Sydney Opera House. In 2012 he made his debut at Lincoln Center and the BBC Proms and was awarded the Leonard Bernstein Prize in the same year.

In the 2012-2013 Season he is organist-in-residence at the Berlin Philharmonic. In 2013 he signed an exclusive contract with Sony Classical.

In 2014 he debuted the “International Touring Organ” (I.T.O.) project at Lincoln Center: from then on, most of his own activities focused precisely on the transportable organ project designed by Carpenter himself.

In 2015 he won the ECHO Klassik Prize and made his debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 2016 he made a version for organ and orchestra of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43, which will later be recorded in 2019 for Sony Classical with the Berlin Konzerthausorchester Orchestra under the baton of Christoph Eschenbach.

In 2019 Carpenter transcribes Bach’s Goldberg Variations and Howard Hanson’s Symphony No. 2 “Romantica”; in the same year, the I.T.O. project comes to the Paris Philharmonic. In 2020 he was awarded the Opus Klassik Prize for his transcription of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

In 2021 he signed an exclusive contract with Universal Music Group and launched an album dedicated to Bach and Hanson for Decca Gold. Also in 2021, he is a soloist in Deutsche Telekom and Deutsche Telekom Street Gig’s “Beethoven X: The AI Project” at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg.