Cómo tan sólo pretendo hacerles pensar con cuenta gotas (y mucho menos sensibilizarlos socialmente), para que no se me hernien, cambiemos radicalmente de tercio en este post y hablemos de un género sexual y musical que une aspectos tan apasionantes como la alta cultura, los zapatos para gente especial y las señoritas bizarras.  Hablemos hoy de las mujeres organistas. Las mujeres organistas son gente hecha de una pasta especial, gente a la que no las importa dominar un instrumento que queda feo (porque queda feo), un instrumento que no se entiende porque tiene muchos botones  (que es que no se entiende), y que además requiere de unos zapatos hechos a posta como de piernicorto para poder pisar unas tablillas inferiores que accionan vaya a saber usted qué. A todos esos hándicaps se le han de sumar tres agravantes: el vestido, ¿que se pone una para tocar un órgano?, desde luego, algo sencillo por la cosa de la coordinación y todo según lo recomendado en este apasionante foro (organforum.con) donde descubrí una larguísima discusión al respecto en la que se acababan echándose citas bíblicas a la cara. Porque ese es precisamente el segundo agravante, el machismo implícito al instrumento: el órgano, un instrumento tradicionalmente  vinculado a la liturgia católica y protestante estaba fuera del alcance de las mujeres, y tenemos que esperar principalmente a la aparición del órgano laico para presenciar a las primeras señoritas que inmoladas en el fuego de las modas extravagantes se hagan organistas. Hasta entonces, ser señorita y dedicarse a sacarle sonidos a un aerófono era un llorar y crujir de dientes tal como nos lo narra este libro Elisabeth Stirling and the musical life of female organists in ninetheen century England. El tercer agravante que se ha de sumar a los anteriores es que en los órganos pueden vivir ratones, y todos estamos de acuerdo en que tocar un órgano hidráulico lleno de roedores no es plato de gusto, amigas. Con la llegada del cine mudo y su acompañamiento en sala por músicos aparecieron las primeras estrellas femeninas del órgano, como la bellísima Mrs Jesse Crawford estrella indiscutible, junto a su marido también organista, de la cadena de cines de  Balaban and Katz (lo massss, vaya). Sus actuaciones eran una atracción por si mismas que se llevaba a cabo antes de las películas  y los domingos en una sesión especial y sus fotos eran pasto de las revista de moda de la época. El cine será también el vehículo de exhibición de nuestra primera estrella, la gran y bizarra Ethel Smith organista, lingüista, amiga de America del Sur y que alcanzó su máxima popularidad con esta versión del “Tico-Tico” que pone en escena toda una fantasía lésbico-anoréxica: instrumentos polifónicos, correccionales femeninos, pastillas adelgazantes y cuba libres. ¡¡¡Woow!!!, menos mal que retiraron esas pastillas del mercado:

Pero en 1935 ocurre un hecho transcendental, la Hammond Corporation inventa uno de los instrumentos más molones del mundo, el órgano eléctrico. Uno que combinaba la acción rápida del piano con los recursos sonoros del órgano, y además, por qué no decirlo, definitivamente más barato que un órgano de iglesia y mucho más adaptable que este a la decoración de interiores. Con ellos la música lounge se llena de sonidos extraños y rancios, y aparecen grupos como Cherry Wainer  & Don Strorer una señorita beat con todas las de la ley, y cuyos movimientos mecánicos-lúbricos-espasmódicos me tienen hipnotizado. Si algún dia termino el curso “Como construir su propio cyborg” le pondré la cara de Cherry Wainer… parece una autómata a punto de romperse en mil pedazos…

Y ustedes se preguntarán “¿Y el órgano tradicional, el mecánico de toda la vida?”. Ese instrumento ha dado, definitivamente, un extraño giro cayendo en manos de bisexuales travestís. Porque, belive or not, la persona que ha vuelto a poner de superrrrrrrrmoda el órgano de iglesia Cameron Carpenter, se ha declarado a la prensa rosa como “queer” diciendo que ha tenido muchos amantes hombres, pero que no le hace un feo a las mujeres. Aquí tienen una entrevista a esta figura contando su juventud en Kansas, y como su padre, representante de muebles o algo así, lo de “queer” se lo olía, porque se notaba, pero que lo de los aerófonos, pues fue toda una sorpresa. Aquí lo tienen, dedicado a todas las mariquitas góticas que me leen, que se conoce que son legión, lo escuchen también todas las aficionadas al soft-porno gótico (una comunidad hermanada). En fin, yo a Cameron Carpenter me lo pongo cuando me hago la toilette previa a meterme a la cama, y me siento una malvada de Disney, pero cada cual es cada uno…

Para terminar, todo muy gracioso, muy bien, pero como siempre este blog cae en una gran discriminación: ¿qué pasa con el hombre heterosexual?. ¿A qué instrumento se dedica?. Es más, ¿cuales son las artes interpretativas del hombre heterosexual afro-americano?. El hombre heterosexual afro-americano lejos de dejarse deslumbrar por los pitidos sincopados de los aerófonos, se dedicó a una actividad más lucrativa pero no menos molona, la dactilografía (no confundir con dactiloscopia). Un hermoso, remoto y olvidado arte como el del órgano, que tuvo a su máximo representante en el gran Ron “Typewriter” Mingo. De verdad, que este video es lo más a-lu-ci-nan-te que he visto en años, a partir del minuto 1.30 empecé a pellizcarme, con eso que os diga… ¡¡que anillazos, que hombre!!

¡¡¡HARDWOOOORK!!!, ¡¡¡HARDWOOORK!!!… por cierto, si alguna se anima, aquí podéis comprar zapatos especiales para organista de segunda mano (que la señorita que los compró se dio cuenta que estaba más cómoda tocando con botas de montaña).

Our boy wonder organist Cameron Carpenter was featured this past Sunday with a 13-minute story on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday.  He demonstrates the organ at Middle Collegiate Church, including an improvisation on the WESun theme.  The NPR page for the story also includes the video of Cameron playing the Chopin Revolutionary Etude (from Cameron’s CD/DVD release.)  In the NPR story Cameron compares himself as a showman not just to Virgil Fox but also to theater organ great Jesse Crawford, who made the Hammond Organ famous.  Why not Ethel Smith, whose most famous number was “Tico Tico“?

So what does one do when one is a twenty-something organist graduate of Juilliard, has already learned all of Bach’s organ works, as well as a lot of other standard repertoire and other goodies such as the almost impossibly difficult Demessieux Six Etudes for Organ? If you’re Cameron Carpenter you set about to re-make the organ as a concert instrument for the 21st century and to market yourself as a rock-star organist bad boy. His debut CD on Telarc, “Revolutionary” is bound to piss a lot of people off. (My hunch proved corrected when I glanced at the buyer comments in the iTunes store for this release. Such hostility, which used to be reserved for kindred spirit renegade organists of an earlier generation such as Virgil Fox and Jean Guillou!) Like Virgil Fox, Cameron plays a “virtual organ” in Trinity Church, Wall Street, in New York, built by Marshall & Ogletree. Since it is based on electronics, it has the capacity to “change its skin” and sometimes sound like a theatre organ, as well as a standard church pipe organ.

The bottom line here is that Cameron Carpenter is immensely talented, but the album is not entirely successful. In fact, the title track, Chopin’s Etude, op. 10, no 12 in C minor, “The Revolutionary,” is for me most dependent on its visual aspect, since he plays the arpeggiated “left hand” part entirely with his feet in the pedals. (Somebody at Telarc must have figured that out as well, because there is a Bonus DVD included with the CD that includes Cameron playing the Chopin Etude.) Unfortunately, it has something of the aspect of an astonishing parlor trick. It’s hard to believe that he’s doing it unless you see it.

Happily, most of the rest of the album is much more successful. For me the high point is Cameron’s transcription of the Liszt “Mephisto Waltz No. 1 (The Dance in the Village Inn)”. He makes the piece his own in his organ “orchestration.” The playing is musical, as well as being technically accomplished.

His performance of the last of the Demessieux Etudes (“Octaves”) makes me wish he would record the whole collection. It is performed “straight” without a lot of registrational hanky-panky. Likewise, his performance of Marcel Dupré’s “Prelude and Fugue in B Major, Op. 7, No. 1″ is relatively straightforward.

At the other end of the spectrum is the “Evolutionary” Bach Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565, Cameron’s own concoction including every gloss that other transcribers have ever included on Bach’s indestructible warhorse. And I miss the point of the mash-up of Duke Ellington’s “Solitude” with Bach’s “Sheep May Safely Graze” in a theatre organ style that would make Radio City Music Hall proud. Bach’s chorale prelude on “Nun komm der Heiden Heiland,” BWV 659, is performed almost as if he’s putting us on–after all the hijinks that have preceded this track, he plays in a quasi-historically-informed manner. It is “correct” within an inch of its life. Please, more Liszt!

There are also two of Cameron Carpenter’s own compositions included on the album. The more successful of the two is his “Homage to Klaus Kinski,” with his use of thematic material and the mastery of the colors of the organ. He writes for his own performing skills as well. It probably makes quite an effect in live performance.

The is not a perfect album; there are parts of it that I find self-indulgent and irritating, but that’s okay. I wish that more organists would take these kinds of risks in programming and performing. It’s possible to do that even without having Cameron Carpenter’s amazing technical skills. Organists wonder why the organ is dying; as is evidenced by the audience reaction when I heard Cameron Carpenter perform in Minneapolis this past June, even the organist-centric world is longing for somebody to capture audiences’ attentions and turn the organ into something viable for the future.

As a postscript, I would note that Cameron Carpenter’s effectiveness as a performer depends in large part on a huge organ with all the modern mechanical conveniences (especially a well-developed combination action–pre-sets that can drastically change registrations with a push of a button.) One has to assume that he would not accept an engagement on an organ such as I play every week–35 stops with completely mechanical action and no combination action. How (or could) he modify is performance style to deal with a less elaborate instrument? It is tantalizing to speculate how it would affect his programming.

One presumes that this won’t be Cameron Carpenter’s last CD. At least I hope not.

Here are this week’s new music releases:

Elvin Bishop – The Blues Rolls On
Jackson Browne – Time the Conqueror
Cameron Carpenter – Revolutionary
Cold War Kids – Loyalty to Loyalty
The Dirty Heads – Any Port in a Storm
Everlast – Love, War and the Ghost of Whitey Ford
Fourplay – Energy
The Human Value – Push and Pull
Joe – Joe Thomas, New Man
Kings of Leon – Only By the Night
Koufax – Strugglers
Lenka – Lenka
Jenny Lewis – Acid Tongue
Demi Lovato – Don’t Forget
McCarthy Trenching – Calamity Drenching
Milosh – III
The Morning Light – The Morning Light
The Pink Spiders – Sweat it Out
Plain White T’s – Big Bad World
Pussycat Dolls – Doll Domination
The Tony Rich Project – Exist
Randy Rogers Band – Randy Rogers Band
Sing It Loud – Come Around
Jazmine Sullivan – Fearless
Thievery Corporation – Radio Retaliation
TV on the Radio – Dear Science

Cameron Carpenter: When was the last time your church organist looked like this?

A couple of months ago I wrote about the performance that the remarkable young organist Cameron Carpenter gave for the national American Guild of Organists convention.  Now he’s about to release his first CD on Telarc, “Revolutionary”, which promises to be as eclectic (electric?) and provocative as his AGO performance.  The CD is scheduled to be released on September 28 September 23 (see comment below).  In the meantime Cameron is giving several performances the end of this week (September 26 and 28) on a new Marshall and Ogletree “virtual pipe organ” at Middle Collegiate Church in New York.  (The “virtual pipe organ” is an electronic instrument in which entire ranks of pipes sampled from other organs are assembled to create a “virtual instrument.”  The first major example of this technology was the organ at Trinity Church, Wall Street, installed after the church’s pipe organ was destroyed by the effects of the 9/11 attacks.)

Michael Phelps: Improvisational Inspiration

The programs will include “standard” repertoire (sometimes fixed up by the performer); transcriptions of orchestral works and movie scores; and several improvisations, including one honoring Olympian Michael Phelps.  (Hmm… how does one do a musical portrait of a dorky guy with a big chest and big feet?)

There’s more about the “Organ Exposé” that is the larger event surrounding Cameron’s concerts at www.organexpose.com.  The concerts are also going to be webcast at the Organ Exposé web site.

Last week I was at the national convention of the American Guild of Organists in the Twin Cities, Minnesota.  Too much for one post, so I’ll be adding several posts about events of note over the next few days.  The of the most outrageous recitals (in a mostly good way) was Cameron Carpenter’s program. He shared the recital with his former Juilliard teacher John Weaver.  Mr. Weaver is a player of the older generation, very elegant and musical.  At the conclusion of his set (for which he received a well-deserved standing ovation), he introduced Cameron as a “talent of Mozartean proportion.”  Mr. Weaver went on to say that although Cameron was his student for a year, he didn’t teach Cameron anything, but rather the Juilliard School paid him to listen to Cameron every week for an hour.

Cameron Carptenter is trying to bring the organ to a new audience—he’s out to be the rock star of the organ world.  He has more pure technical ability that anyone I’ve ever heard (with the possible exception of the young Jean Guillou) and he feels free to make music his own.  Fifteen or twenty years ago AGO audiences would have been outraged (in a bad way) by his performance, because it in no way matches any kind of “historically informed” performance practice.  Now people look more for musicianship, musical communication skills, and even showmanship, all of which Cameron Carpenter has by the boatload.  On his program he played music as diverse as one of Jeanne Demessieux’s nearly impossible Etudes, a piece by Leo Sowerby, and Cameron’s own “synthesized” version of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, which incorporates elements from just about every transcription that has ever been made of the piece.  He concluded with an encore, a transcription of John Philip Sousa’s march “Stars and Stripes Forever.”  It’s one of Cameron’s regular parlor trick/showpieces.  Here it is on youtube.  Note how he plays the piccolo obbligato the first time not with his fingers, but with his feet in the pedals: amazing.

Cameron wore a similar all-white outfit for his Minnesota recital as in the video. Organists (being by nature very catty) always have some sort of comment.  As the audience was filing out of the church sanctuary after the program, I heard a gentleman comment, “That nurse sure can play the organ.”   Later in the week I encountered Cameron on the street in a black tank top and chartreuse green skin-tight jeans. He only had moderate eye makeup on.  Needless to say you will not be seeing Virtual Farm Boy in a similar outfit.  Always stylish basic black for VFB.