Orlando's Steinmetz Hall is marking Halloween this year with a vampire nearly as old as cinema itself. On Saturday, Oct. 31, at 7 p.m., the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts will screen F.W. Murnau's 1922 silent horror classic Nosferatu, accompanied live by Grammy-nominated organist and composer Cameron Carpenter performing his own original score.
The event, listed on the Dr. Phillips Center's calendar as “Live-to-Film with Cameron Carpenter,” takes place at Steinmetz Hall, located at 445 S. Magnolia Ave. in Orlando, according to the Orlando Date Night Guide. The same listing confirms Carpenter will perform his score live during the screening, pairing silent-era dread with a freshly composed musical backdrop.
Carpenter is no stranger to breaking new ground for his instrument. He holds the distinction, per the same listing, of being a Grammy-nominated organist, and according to his artist page with Askonas Holt, he was the first organist ever nominated for a Grammy Award for a solo album. That nomination traced back to his 2008 Telarc album Revolutionary, which AllMusic's biography of the artist describes as the first solo organ recital ever nominated for a Grammy.
A Juilliard-Trained Innovator Behind the Keys
Carpenter's musical pedigree runs through one of the country's most prestigious conservatories. The same Askonas Holt profile notes he is a graduate of The Juilliard School, and Sony Classical's artist biography pins down the timeline further, noting he studied composition and organ at Juilliard in New York from 2000 to 2006.
His career since then has been defined by pushing the pipe organ into unconventional territory. The Askonas Holt page notes he received the 2012 Leonard Bernstein Award, and in 2014 he unveiled the International Touring Organ, an instrument built to his own specifications in collaboration with American digital organ pioneers Marshall & Ogletree, according to Sony Classical. AllMusic's biography adds that Carpenter has made organ arrangements of more than 200 works originally written for piano or orchestra, a body of work that underscores the ambition driving a Halloween-night pairing of silent film and live score.
That touring instrument has carried his performances well beyond Orlando before. A 2018 listing from UC Santa Barbara's campus calendar shows Carpenter performed a concert featuring the International Touring Organ on Feb. 12 of that year, running from 7 to 8:30 p.m. local time.
How Dr. Phillips Center Stages Live-Scored Films
Steinmetz Hall's live-to-film format follows a model the Dr. Phillips Center has used for other screenings, where a film is shown while music is performed in synchronization with the action onscreen. Per the venue's own guide to films in concert, the movie is typically projected on a 40-foot HD screen positioned above the performers onstage, giving audiences a cinema-scale picture alongside live musicianship.
For Nosferatu, that staging will pair Murnau's century-old imagery of Count Orlok's shadow with Carpenter's newly composed accompaniment rather than a traditional orchestra, a twist on the format built around a single performer and his instrument. As Orlando Weekly reported, the screening arrives as part of the publication's Oct. 28-Nov. 3 print issue coverage of Halloween-week arts events in the city.
A Century-Old Film Still Finding New Audiences
Nosferatu has endured as a touchstone of horror cinema since its 1922 release under Murnau's direction, and its staying power is part of what makes a live-scored revival appealing to modern audiences nearly 104 years later. Pairing that vintage silent footage with a contemporary organ score gives Orlando audiences a chance to experience the film the way many silent movies were originally intended to be seen: with music performed live in the room, shaping the mood scene by scene.
