Cameron Carpenter

Cameron Carpenter returns to the Festspielhaus St. Pölten with Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's horror film classic Nosferatu (1921)! The extravagant classical virtuoso with rock star flair has redefined the organ concert format: He unconventionally combines the time-honored sound of the gleaming pipes with a new style of playing in a repertoire ranging from classical to pop. Born in Pennsylvania in 1981, Carpenter was already performing Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier at the age of eleven. His first original compositions were written at the renowned Juilliard School in New York, and his album Revolutionary even earned him a Grammy nomination. Carpenter's artistic focus lies in the musical accompaniment of silent films, which he stages with virtuosity at his internationally acclaimed ciné-concerts - from Hong Kong to the Lincoln Center in New York. At the Festspielhaus, he devotes himself to Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's Nosferatu, an adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. The film, a milestone of expressionist cinema and one of the very first horror films, was restored for the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation in 2006 and subsequently digitized in 2013. To this day, it continues to inspire with its dark imagery and tells the story of young Thomas Hutter, who travels to the eerie castle of Count Orlok (Nosferatu) and encounters a sinister, vampiric threat. Cameron Carpenter sets the gripping plot to music with his masterful improvisations, creating a fascinating combination of traditional sound production, film history and masterful instrumental control.

A film from the collection of the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung (www.murnau-stiftung.de) in Wiesbaden.

CAST

Cameron Carpenter Organ