BACK TO THE FUTURE

The organ – with its centuries of history, iconic and eccentric characters, and inexorable technological advance – is an institution. One sometimes hears people talk about organs in terms of monumentality: a "pilgrimage" organ, a "monumental instrument." That's what worries me, because I don't want to see the organ as a monument – an immobile, staid, time-worn statue around which traffic is diverted. But seldom has any instrument embodied such challenges to the itinerant performer who would make it commercially successful, entertaining, enlightening. Indeed, the pipe organ's physical immobility is probably the best metaphor for such challenges: in more ways than one, it can't go to the people.

As a traveling performer, I'm unable to have the relationship with site-specific organs that most musicians have with their personal instrument, and from which they and their audiences benefit night after night. There are logistical benefits, too, because the preparation of each performance I give is somewhat analogous to a conductor working with an orchestra. To rehearse and perform with five different orchestras in a month requires much more work for the conductor, while a conductor and a single orchestra traveling together might play twice as many concerts of the same repertoire, learning new works on the way. So, for some time, my dream has been to tour with a unique, purpose-built touring organ of my own design: an instrument that, unlike most organs permanently installed in a single space, is actually intended to have no one permanent home.

The technology that has come to be known as the virtual pipe organ has massive artistic and performative potential that is only just beginning to be understood. It turns the computer into a musical instrument, using software and speakers to deliver the sounds of pipes from great organs around the world into the hands of the musician in ways that could hardly be accomplished physically, yet retaining the basic playing interface of the pipe organ. It frees the player from the physical constraint of church or concert hall, and from the perhaps more oppressive boundaries of genre – as the touring organ will demonstrate, drawing not only on the sounds of classical and church organs, but also on cinema organs, reed organs and harmoniums, and other outgrowths of the pipe organ's rich history. It makes it possible for the artist to use the sounds of the pipe organ as a malleable medium to be experimented with, often in ways that are  economically and physically unfeasible.

Best of all, the virtual pipe organ allows the roles of organ designer, builder, and player to overlap as they never have before. When this happens, the instrument has a chance to become less "Kingly", and more democratic; less antisocial, and more personal; less predictable, and much more interesting, entertaining, and relevant.

Starting in 2011, Cameron Carpenter will tour with his personal, dedicated touring organ.

This monumental cross-genre organ is designed to present, at any venue, the breadth of Cameron's repertoire and performance styles. The organ, including the console, is entirely modular, allowing for easy load-in and load-out. The organ’s sound system is a massive complement of highly specific professional audio speakers; while large, it is configured for richness and dimensionality, rather than merely volume. It is always voiced to the venue during the course of setup, and its output (and acoustical modeling, where desirable) is scalable to its environment. Thus the organ is equally successful in clubs, small halls, and intimate venues, as well as concert halls, large festival settings, reverberant spaces, and semi-outdoor auditoriums.

Excalibur's "Visibility" console is designed for minimum visual interference with audience lines-of-sight; maximum accessibility for live-performance cameras; and modularity. The experimental pedalboard under development (not pictured in artists’ rendering, above) comprises 49 notes from F to D, 14 more notes than the standard pedalboard currently in use in most American organs. The console disassembles into its component parts (keyboard stack, stop jambs left and right, pedal clavier, support structure and foot control array) for load-in and load-out in practically any performance space.