Miscellaneous

A night with the mighty Cameron

Organ virtuoso plans only semi-local tour stop with Richmond appearance

Published

14 years ago

September 29, 2011

Cameron Carpenter says the conditions of the organs in the various concert halls in which he plays are a huge factor in determining his set list. (Photo by Michael Hart; courtesy Buckle Sweet Media)

Cameron Carpenter, organist
A Night With the Mighty Wurlitzer
Oct. 7 at 8 p.m.
Byrd Theatre
2908 West Cary Street
Richmond, VA
Tickets: $35 ($45 at the door; $75 VIP)

Anyone who follows classical organ music — especially gays — know virtuoso Cameron Carpenter is the most iconoclastic and controversial organist to come along in decades. He’s also arguably the most famous.

Granted, it’s a field in which it takes little to be iconoclastic. Even with all the gay organists out there — some anecdotally guess church players are 70 percent gay in the U.S. — it’s a highly staid playing field. Churches that think musically outside the box are chucking the organ altogether in many cases, not thinking of ways to bring it into the 21st century.

Carpenter — though often of serious facial expression — is clearly having a field day. Sadly, his international tour hopping of the last several years has eluded Washington. Local fans will get their best chance to see him next week when his fall tour makes a Richmond, Va., stop. It’s a little more than two hours from D.C. During a lengthy phone interview this week from his Berlin home, the 30-year-old bi Juilliard-trained prodigy-turned-phenom who grew up home schooled in tiny Meadville, Pa., covered a broad swath of topics about his life, work, goals and musical philosophies. Comments have been edited for length.

BLADE: Why Berlin and how long have you lived there?

CARPENTER: I’ve been here a little over a year though my total time here, because of touring, has been probably half that. Initially I felt it was a good time to live in Europe. I didn’t want to live in the U.S. my entire life and I didn’t want to turn 30 there.

BLADE: Why?

CARPENTER: The U.S. is a very confused place right now. I don’t wish to renounce it, but I never really had any nationalistic sense at all. … Europe is more artist-friendly and its sense of history is much longer.

BLADE: How much do you vary your set list from night to night? What can we expect in Richmond?

CARPENTER: It’s hard to say. I understand it’s some kind of historic organ there, so that will be a big factor. I’ve gotten a lot of messages about the terrible shape it’s in which, of course, exacerbates the usual question marks of what I’ll be playing.

BLADE: But even if every organ you play had infinite capabilities, you’d still vary your program nightly?

CARPENTER: Oh yes, most definitely. When we get the touring organ on the road (a project Carpenter has been working on that will allow him to play anything anywhere anytime), I’m intent to keep doing that. … I think it’s just part of the ethos of being a classical musician. I know some who do the same thing every (night) within a tour and it would be difficult for me to get excited about that.

BLADE: But what about fans who read about something really great you did in another city but will likely only get one chance to hear you per year if they’re lucky?

CARPENTER: That does occasionally happen. I’ve been doing something interesting with the Mahler Fifth Symphony and I have recently been pairing it with a new transcription of Busoni’s piano transcription of Bach’s “Chaconne,” which was originally written for violin and putting them together as a massive prelude and fugue of sorts but it’s like 35 minutes or most of the second half of the program. I pretty much despair of playing in anywhere in the U.S., though, because you cannot do it unless it’s a massively well-equipped organ in perfect condition.

BLADE: So you’re obviously concerned, as one would expect, about sound quality and instrument quality in the various venues you play — does it bother you to think of people watching YouTube clips of your playing with the sound coming out of crappy computer speakers?

CARPENTER: It’s two different subjects. In a live experience, the acoustics are more alchemy than science so there are things we’re doing for the touring organ that will have the ability to make that organ sound great in any room, but that is a world of difference from watching something on YouTube. At this point, we just have a cultural literacy that understands YouTube and the very YouTube-ness of it. It’s a staggering cultural phenomenon and the price you pay for it is loss of fidelity … but the organ has certain remarkable traits that make it possible for much of its impact to be retained.

BLADE: What are your thoughts — even preliminarily — on your next album?

CARPENTER: I can’t really say much. I’m pursuing some options with a few different labels but it’s still in negotiation.

BLADE: But regardless of how it’s distributed, what would you like to record?

CARPENTER: My number one goal in life right now is seeing the touring organ to fruition so every discussion and question regards that as a priority. Having said that, launching it with the next album would really be a personal milestone and a cultural milestone. I think I’d like to record more of my own material. I’ve been composing a lot.

BLADE: Are your shoes custom?

CARPENTER: Yes. We’ve thought about marketing them but it’s such a small market.

BLADE: You have them in several colors — silver, red — how many pairs do you have?

CARPENTER: I really only have one truly functional pair. They can become worn out if you wear them on concrete and such. I get them from a company in Europe.

BLADE: Are they expensive?

CARPENTER: A few hundred Euros a pair. Certainly not expensive compared to having couture shoes custom made. They’re really more like dance shoes.

BLADE: And you’re dating someone these days I hear. How do you make that work with so much touring?

CARPENTER: It’s very good. I live with a 22-year-old philosophy prodigy and I guess the two of us have an essentially queer relationship … It lets me have the security of a home and a partner but obviously we both enjoy sleeping with other people from time to time. Travel actually excites that side of my life and I’m more social. I can be in the house for a very long time and have this hard-fought territory. It can be healthy to get out because I have a tendency to cocoon and overwork.

BLADE: Why are so many organists gay?

CARPENTER: Any answer I could give would be speculative but I can trod out whatever threadbare theory I have. I, of course, know no more than anyone else and less than some. But statistically or anecdotally, yes, it seems most American organists are gay or at least questionable if not questioning. It’s an unfair assumption because I also know a number of straight American organists. I also have some difficulty with the accuracy of the term gay as applied to myself … but I think the organ is a kind of voice in some ways and it’s kind of a mythical or mythological voice of empowerment and command so somehow down the channels of interpretation and tradition perhaps a sort of rivulet opened and appealed to a certain aesthetic branch of personality that was sort of gay. Theaters and churches are traditionally camp. You have myriad controls and buttons that can bring things from the softest whisper to an obnoxious roar. … Church, let’s face it, is a pretty innately camp environment where you have men wearing dresses acting out all this ceremony. In some ways, it’s the same as the theater. So where organst exist perhaps somehow appeals to the camp nature of where gay men express themselves. I wouldn’t really know though, because the organ never seemed any more gay or religious to me than the accordion.

BLADE: You didn’t grow up going to church or hearing the organ in a church?

CARPENTER: No

BLADE: Your family isn’t religious?

CARPENTER: No, I grew up in a religion-free house.

BLADE: What do you think of Virgil Fox? Are you flattered when people compare you to him?

CARPENTER: I don’t think about him a lot. Some of what he achieved was pretty remarkable for the time but I have a few reservations about him artistically. It’s a dangerous subject because the people who are really nostalgic and positive about him are kind of substituting experiences very vividly or positively and skipping over other things in a kind of substitution for the experience itself. I think what is born out of really studying a lot of the footage is a lot of it is simply not very sophisticated. When I hear people say I remind them of him or getting very nostalgic about it, I think they’re probably not really listening to me.

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Miscellaneous

Rehoboth Pride festival to take place July 19

LGBTQ-friendly resort town welcomes third year of celebrations

Published

1 hour ago

July 11, 2025

Abigail Hatting

Rehoboth Beach celebrates Pride next weekend. (Washington Blade photo by Daniel Truitt)

Rehoboth Beach Pride is back for a day of summer celebration next Saturday.

The Delaware beach town will host its Pride festival at the Rehoboth Beach Convention Center on July 19 from 9 a.m.-2 p.m., followed by an after-party at Freddie’s Beach Bar and a ticketed event in the evening with a film screening, comedian, and musician.

“It will be a day of community engagement, fun, celebration and learning, all sorts of things rolled into one,” David Mariner, executive director of Sussex Pride, told the Washington Blade. “I think it’s a great opportunity for us to be together, to support each other.”

Pride is organized by Sussex Pride and Gay Women of Rehoboth. The festival will include a free, family-friendly event with vendors offering information and resources, health screenings, and other activities.

Drag queen Roxy Overbrooke will host the festival, with performances throughout the day by Ivy Blu Austin, Goldstar, the cast of Clear Space Theatre, JC Pizzaz, and Kadet Kelly.

Mariner said Rehoboth Pride has not seen a decrease in corporate support this year, as some Pride celebrations have. Last year, the vendor spots were capped at 50 but increased to 60 this year.

“The main thing that’s different this year is what’s happening in the world and what’s happening in the country so it changes the tone,” Mariner said. “I go into this with strength and determination and an awareness and appreciation for the rights that we have here in Delaware. I go into this … knowing there are people in our community feeling under attack. There are a lot of things happening at the national level that impact us from healthcare to education that affect our lives in various ways.”

Funds raised from a raffle will be used to support unhoused LGBTQ youth in Delaware. Last year, the raffle raised $1,000, which was donated to the Safeguards Housing Committee, a program of PFLAG Wilmington.

In response to LGBTQ youth “increasingly targeted by harmful rhetoric and policies,” the festival will hold various workshops with topics such as supporting the LGBTQ Latinx community, suicide prevention, and an ACLU activist training.

Mariner referenced a Dan Savage quote from the AIDS epidemic that he loves. He said it reflects Pride festivals and the celebration of pride in the LGBTQ community.

“During the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night. The dance kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for,” the quote reads.

Mariner said having an event like this that combines education, advocacy, and celebration is reflective of “who we are as queer people.” He said it’s important to learn and recommit to the work that needs to be done and that he is looking forward to every piece of the day.

“I would just like to see everyone leave the convention center feeling loved and connected and supported and with a renewed sense of strength and determination to face whatever challenges may come,” Mariner said.

Miscellaneous

Stephen Miller’s legal group sues Fairfax County schools

Lawsuit challenges policies for transgender, nonbinary students

Published

1 year ago

March 7, 2024

Staff reports

(Bigstock photo)

Former Trump administration official Stephen Miller’s legal group on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the Fairfax County School District over its policies for transgender and nonbinary students.

America First Legal in a press release notes it filed the lawsuit against the school district on behalf of a female, “practicing Roman Catholic” student “for allowing teenage boys to use the female restrooms and for forcing a radical, government-sponsored gender indoctrination and approved-speech scheme that discriminates against students on the basis of sex and religion and violates their free speech rights under the Virginia Constitution.”

The lawsuit was filed in Fairfax County Circuit Court.

The Virginia Department of Education last July announced new guidelines for trans and nonbinary students for which Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin asked. Equality Virginia and other advocacy groups claim they, among other things, would forcibly out trans and nonbinary students.

Fairfax County schools are among the school districts that have refused to implement the guidelines.

“Fairfax County Public Schools appears to believe that its policies and regulations can override the Virginia Constitution’s protections for religious beliefs, speech and from government discrimination on the basis of sex and religious beliefs,” said America First legal Senior Advisor Ian Prior in a press release. “It is well past time for FCPS to stop sacrificing the constitutional rights of its students so that it can implement a state-sanctioned ideology that demands compliance in speech, beliefs and conduct.”

FCPS Pride, a group that represents the Fairfax County School District’s LGBTQ employees, described the lawsuit as “abhorrent.”

“We are confident that the school board and the superintendent will strongly and firmly oppose this specious suit and continue to support all students, including transgender and gender expansive students,” said the group in a press list.

Miscellaneous

More than a dozen LGBTQ candidates on the ballot in Va.

Control of the state Senate hangs in the balance

Published

2 years ago

November 2, 2023

Michael K. Lavers

Virginia state Del. Danica Roem (D-Manassas) speaks at the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund National Champagne Brunch in D.C. on April 23, 2023. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

More than a dozen openly LGBTQ candidates are on the ballot in Virginia on Nov. 7.

State Del. Danica Roem (D-Manassas) is running against Republican Bill Woolf in the newly redistricted Senate District 30 that includes western Prince William County and the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park.

Roem in 2018 became the first openly transgender person seated in a state legislature in the U.S. after she defeated then-state Del. Bob Marshall, a prominent LGBTQ rights opponent who co-wrote Virginia’s constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Roem would become Virginia’s first out trans state senator if she defeats Woolf.

Woolf supports a bill that would require school personnel to out trans students to their parents. The Republican Party of Virginia has highlighted this position in ads in support of Woolf.

“Thank you for reminding me why I won three elections in this district in Prince William County, which is the most diverse county in all of Virginia and the 10th most nationally where we welcome everyone because of who they are, not despite it, no matter what you look like, where you come from, how you worship, if you do, or who you love because you should be able to thrive here because of who you are, never despite it,” said Roem on Sept. 28 in response to a woman who heckled her during a debate with Woolf that took place at Metz Middle School in Manassas.

Gay state Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria) is running for re-election in Senate District 39. State Del. Mark Sickles (D-Fairfax County), who is also gay, is running for re-election in House District 43.

Former state Del. Joshua Cole, who identifies as bisexual, is running against Republican Lee Peters in House District 65. State Del. Kelly Convirs-Fowler (D-Virginia Beach), who came out as bisexual last year at Hampton Roads Pride, will face Republican Mike Karslake and independent Nicholas Olenik.

State Del. Marcia “Cia” Price (D-Newport News), a Black woman who identifies as pansexual, is running for re-election in House District 85.

Adele McClure, a queer Democrat, is running to represent House District 2 that includes portions of Arlington County. Laura Jane Cohen, a bisexual woman who is a member of the Fairfax County School Board, is a House of Delegates candidate in House District 15.

Rozia Henson, a gay federal contractor who works for the Department of Homeland Security, is running in House District 19. Zach Coltrain, a gay Gen Zer, is running against state Del. Barry Knight (R-Virginia Beach) in House District 98.

LPAC has endorsed Jade Harris, a Rockbridge County Democrat who is running to represent Senate District 3. Harris’ website notes trans rights are part of their platform.

“Protecting trans rights, repealing right to work, strengthening unions and supporting our farmers are just a few of my legislative priorities,” reads the website. “I am dedicated to addressing the revitalization of our state’s infrastructure, fostering a favorable environment for job creation, and supporting our public education system.”

Republicans currently control the House by a 51-46 margin, while Democrats have a 21-19 majority in the state Senate.

Senate Democrats have successfully blocked anti-LGBTQ bills that Republicans have introduced since Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin took office in January 2022.

The Virginia Department of Education in July released new guidelines for trans and nonbinary students that activists and their supporters have sharply criticized. They fear that Republicans will curtail LGBTQ rights in the state if they regain control of both houses of the General Assembly on Nov. 7.

“Time and time again, anti-equality lawmakers and the Youngkin administration have made it clear that they will continue to disrespect and disregard the lives and lived experience of LGBTQ+ people within Virginia,” said Equality Virginia PAC Executive Director Narissa Rahaman in August when her organization and the Human Rights Campaign endorsed Roem, Ebbin and other “pro-equality champions.”

“We must elect pro-equality champions who will secure and strengthen our freedoms,” added Rahaman. “We have that chance as the eyes of the nation are on us this November.”

The LGBTQ+ Victory Fund has endorsed Fairfax County School Board Vice Chair Karl Frisch and Fairfax County School Board candidates Robyn Lady and Kyle McDaniel, who identify as lesbian and bisexual respectively.

Michael Pruitt would become the first openly bisexual man elected to the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors if he were to win on Nov. 7. Blacksburg Town Councilman Michael Sutphin and Big Stone Gay Town Councilman Tyler Hughes, who are both gay, are running for re-election.

“Tyler will be a critical voice for equality as the only out LGBTQ+ person on the Big Stone Gap Town Council,” says the Victory Fund on its website.

Cal Benn contributed to this article.