FEB 16-17 | Cameron Carpenter
Feb 16 - Feb 17, 2024
Grace Cathedral
PLEASE NOTE:
This page is an archive of a past production
Please visit our calendar for all upcoming SFJAZZ shows.
Original show description below.
If GRAMMY-nominated organist Cameron Carpenter had made his mark merely by ruffling the feathers of the pipe organ’s stodgy establishment, he’d merit only passing interest. But the 42-year-old virtuoso has taken a sledgehammer to conventions while forcing the cloistered classical world to acknowledge his iconoclastic vision. He returns to the hallowed space at Grace Cathedral and its historic 1934 Æolian-Skinner pipe organ for two nights — the first devoted to the work of J.S. Bach (2/16), and the second providing the musical lifeblood to Fritz Lang’s 1927 science fiction landmark Metropolis (2/17).
Winner of the prestigious Bernstein Award (Schleswig-Holstein), Carpenter has devoted his career to expanding the organ’s frontiers. Through his numerous transcriptions of non-organ works, collaborations with jazz and pop musicians, his ambitious original compositions, and the revolutionary development of his digital International Touring Organ, he ventures into uncharted territory when it comes to technique, repertoire, and presentation. He tops it off with bravura showmanship, presiding over the instrument with all four limbs in furious motion.
CAMERON CARPENTER
BACH INTERPRETATIONS
Fri, Feb 16 • 8PM • Grace Cathedral
JS BACH
Prelude and Fugue in E flat Major “Saint Anne”, BWV 552
IMPROVISATION
Symphonic Transition & Approach to G Major
JS BACH ed. CARPENTER
Goldberg Variations, BWV 988
The program is intended to feel like three acts in a sort of music drama for organ alone. The fanfares, the meticulously delineated architectures of the great Saint-Anne prelude and fugue essay a tremendous, long-lined expanse of form and blissfully logical structure. We then indulge in an improvised transition, which departs the structures of Bach’s perfection to dwell on chromatic harmony and shimmering, ambiguous organ contrast colors, summoning the late afternoon sky above Bach’s great E-flat major building. Finding ourselves thus in the sky, If I manage to do it right, the Goldberg Variations in their purity, their perfection and otherworldliness will be found floating there like the perfect mystery they are.
Please, kindly hold applause until the conclusion of the Variations, and if possible, until the final remnants of those quiet sounds have been allowed to return to the silence that existed before them.
Many thanks to SFJAZZ and to Grace Cathedral, for the chance to construct this evening of most introspective, and enjoyable music.Cameron Carpenter
FRI, FEB 16 Interpretations of Bach
SAT, FEB 17 Music of 1927 film Metropolis
The classical crossover superstar and pipe organ virtuoso returns to Grace Cathedral for two nights — one devoted to the work of J.S. Bach, and one for the 1927 science fiction film Metropolis.
Carpenter is one of the rare musicians who changes the game of his instrument… He is a smasher of cultural and classical music taboos. He is technically the most accomplished organist I have ever witnessed… And, most important of all, the most musical.
The Los Angeles Times
Carpenter is one of the rare musicians who changes the game of his instrument… He is a smasher of cultural and classical music taboos. He is technically the most accomplished organist I have ever witnessed… And, most important of all, the most musical.
The Los Angeles Times
Personnel
Cameron Carpenter pipe organ
Extravagantly talented… everything he touches turns fantastical and memorable…
THE NEW YORK TIMES ON CAMERON CARPENTER
Personnel
Cameron Carpenter pipe organ
Extravagantly talented… everything he touches turns fantastical and memorable…
THE NEW YORK TIMES ON CAMERON CARPENTER
Watch & Listen
Cameron Carpenter (comp. J.S. Bach)
Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, Aria da capo
Cameron Carpenter (comp. J.S. Bach)
Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 Variatio 29 a 1 ovvero 2 Clav.
Cameron Carpenter (comp. J.S. Bach)
Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, Aria da capo
Cameron Carpenter (comp. J.S. Bach)
Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 Variatio 29 a 1 ovvero 2 Clav.