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REVOLUTIONARY COLLABORATION ONPICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION DVD
Organist Cameron Carpenter and video artist Marshall Yaeger
rework Mussorgsky warhorse with 5.1 sound and digital collages
Cameron Carpenter, whom The New York Times called "the maverick organist" and "a first-rate talent," arranged Modest Mussorgsky's famous 16-movement piano piece for the organ. He recorded it for SeeMusicDVD, a label that specializes in DVD releases in its Kaleidoplex™ Collection (2-disc albums, DVD + CD).
Marshall Yaeger, an author and video artist, took the music and digitally added movement and animation—as he has done since 2003 with six other surround sound organ recordings. The video art is sometimes thematically related to a musical movement in Pictures at an Exhibition (made famous in an orchestration by Maurice Ravel), and sometimes it moves to the music rhythmically, often abstract.
Carpenter, whom "W" recently described as the "runway model/organist," is also featured in a documentary on the DVD, which includes his own improvised composition, "New York City Sessions." Watching and hearing him improvise is sometimes astounding, as the documentary shows; and one movement is based on the recently defunct C-B-G-B.
The New York Times dubbed the Trinity Church Wall Street organ that Carpenter chose for the recording "The Virtual Pipe Organ." After the events of 9/11 destroyed the church's large 1974 Aeolian-Skinner organ, Owen Burdick, Trinity's Organist and Director of Music, commissioned Marshall & Ogletree of Needham, Massachusetts to create its "Opus 1" instrument. The electronic organ is a double organ composed of two 85-stop instruments, front and back, yielding 240 voices. It is therefore one of the two largest organs in New York, and the first "broadband" musical instrument of the 21st century.
Fashion designer Mary McFadden, a friend of both artists, hosted a "vernissage" of five collages from the DVD that Yaeger composed from different movements and moods. Photos of Carpenter by Anastasia Smith appeared in each of the posters. The artists signed the first set, which was offered in a silent auction to benefit Classical Action: Performing Arts Against AIDS, at Bang & Olufsen Columbus Avenue on November 13 from 7:00 to 9:00 PM.
Bang & Olufsen's showroom featured the Mussorgsky work in its private "home theatre" throughout the event, and showed videos made last August of Carpenter playing the same work at Trinity in a concert that filled the historic church, and that was webcast and watched "on demand" by more than 15,000 viewers in the weeks that followed.
Information on Carpenter may be found on www.Cameron-Carpenter.com. Information on Marshall & Ogletree may be accessed and downloaded on www.VirtualPipe.Org. The Trinity Church concert may be seen on demand at www.TrinityWallStreet.org (select Organ Exhibit or Watch Organ Festival). Bang & Olufsen is at www.bang-olufsen.com. Marshall Yaeger's website is www.MarshallYaeger.com.
Contact: Dale Bonenberger 1/212 799-9300 or dale@circlesinternet.com