MUSSORGSKY-CARPENTER: Pictures at an Exhibition; CARPENTER: New York City Sessions – Cameron Carpenter at the organ of Trinity Church Wall Street – Circles International CD + DVD

This may be the most interesting of the series of pipe organ programs involving the  image-maker known as the Kaleidoplex.  The young organist’s nearly over-the-top arrangement of the Mussorgsky piano work certainly sits up and barks in this version on the twin Marshall & Ogletree organs of Trinity Church. An electronic behemoth, the instruments total 170 stops, 240 voices, 80 channels of audio and 15,000 watts power. If the spectacular arrangement and performance doesn’t captivate you enough, you are also watching on the screen the constantly-flowing and changing images generated by Marshal Yaeger’s Kaleidoplex. While the previously-seen rotating mandala patterns are still prominent, there are a host of other artistic images and special effects appropriately involving pictures and frames around them, all synchronized to Mussorgsky’s music.

The NYC Sessions is a suite of improvisations based on various New York scenes and locations, accompanied by a slide show of the locations. Subways, signs, traffic, buildings, and people in daytime and nighttime NYC are the subjects of both the music and photos. The outrageous registrations heard in the Mussorgsky also fit very well to the New York theme, and a touch of jazz feeling is also heard. The short Virgil Fox encore is also paired with some interesting Kaleidoplex imaging-making. For a big finish on the documentary on the DVD, Carpenter’s hands are shown in closeup on the three manuals of the organ console as he creates an improvisation especially for the documentary. As Yaeger points out, one is almost certain the video is sped up, but it is not. Carpenter’s hands dart from manual to manual and to registration buttons like a lizard’s tongue snatches an insect.

– John Sunier