Cameron Carpenter

Palais Montcalm invites you to an exceptional concert where cinema and the grand organ take center stage. Virtuoso Cameron Carpenter will perform his own original score for the film The Phantom of the Opera. This legendary silent-era masterpiece, inspired by the novel by Gaston Leroux, will be screened in its restored version with French subtitles, given new life through Carpenter’s extraordinary artistry.

Born in Pennsylvania in 1981, Cameron Carpenter was already performing Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier on the organ by the age of eleven. He went on to develop not only dazzling technical mastery and virtuosity, but also a formidable skill set as a composer and arranger.

In 2012, one year after presenting his Concerto for Organ and Orchestra in Germany, he received the Leonard Bernstein Award at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival. Carpenter served as artist-in-residence at the Konzerthaus Berlin during the 2017–2018 season, where he transcribed more than one hundred works for organ, including Mahler’s Fifth Symphony.

In 2014, he created the International Touring Organ (ITO), a custom-built digital organ he has taken to the world’s greatest stages. The Covid-19 pandemic only partially slowed his activities: he performed for seniors in lockdown, mounting his organ on the back of a truck for 32 concerts under the motto “All you need is Bach!”

In 2024, Cameron Carpenter returned to the Palais Montcalm to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the grand organ with a memorable concert, featuring performances of the Goldberg Variations and Pictures at an Exhibition.