Cameron Carpenter

• Name — Cameron Carpenter • Birth Name — Taylor Cameron Carpenter • Born — 18 April 1981 • Died — YYYY MM DD • Instrument — Organ • Occupation — Organist • Label — * Sony Classical • Telarc • SeeMusicDVD • Website — cameroncarpenter.com

Taylor Cameron Carpenter was born in the state of Pennsylvania, United States. He attended high school at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and has bachelor's and master's degrees from the Juilliard School in New York, having studied with Gerre Hancock, John Weaver, and Paul Jacobs. Though he is not religious, Carpenter was from 2008 to 2009 the artist-in-residence at Middle Collegiate Church in New York's East Village, where he played a four-manual electronic organ that he designed for the broad-ranging music of that church. Carpenter ended his residency in July 2009.

Carpenter has been both criticized by some and praised by others for his unorthodox interpretations of the standard organ repertoire. Registrations rarely follow those suggested by the composer, and Carpenter often takes dramatic liberties in articulation. Carpenter is also noted for his advocacy of the digital organ, particularly development of a touring electronic organ, citing factors such as the obstacles the pipe organ imposes on the ability of a traveling performer to enjoy an ongoing relationship with a single instrument in the same manner as many other instrumentalists. Despite this, he frequently performs on pipe organs, often garnering major exposure for the instrument. He designed and commissioned the International Touring Organ (ITO), Opus 8 of the Marshall and Ogletree company, a one-of-a-kind, customized, "full-scale portable organ sonically tailorable to any acoustic environment", which took ten years and cost $2 million to build. Since its premiere in March 2014, he no longer has to learn a new instrument for every performance which he characterized as maddening, and he now tours worldwide to venues that have never had an organ. The story of the ITO is the subject of the 2015 documentary "The Sound of My Life". In 2020, while recovering from COVID-19 in Berlin, Germany, Carpenter could not oversee the moving and ongoing storage of the ITO. On account of this, the organ and its components suffered irreparable damage. “It taught me a lot about loss,” Carpenter said. “And it changed my feelings about music itself. It disrupted my conviction that I want to be a musician.”

Carpenter has been identified as bisexual. In a New York Times interview, it was reported, "Mr. Carpenter... describes his sexuality as 'radically inclusive.