Carson Becke
piano
Born and raised in Ottawa, Canadian pianist Carson Becke has performed worldwide. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, UK, and at the University of Oxford, where he attained a doctorate in musicology. His recordings can be heard on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube. He forms one half of Duo Octavian, a two-piano ensemble that he co-founded with fellow pianist Suren Barry in 2016. Duo Octavian seeks to expand the two-piano repertoire with their own arrangements of various works, and with arrangements and commissions by other performers and composers. Carson is committed to creating structural changes to the music industry in response to climate change, and the resulting need to create more sustainable systems. His TedX talk on this can be heard here. He is enacting those ideas through his directorship of the Pontiac Enchanté concert series: environmental sustainability is one of the cornerstones of its mission. Carson lived in the United Kingdom for fifteen years: first in London, and then in Oxford. In 2019 he moved home to Ottawa, Canada, and now lives in Wakefield, Quebec, with his partner Madeline, and their dogs Jerry and Neumann. In addition to his freelance performance work, he is on faculty at the University of Ottawa as a part-time professor, and is a co-director of the recently founded Hills Winter Music Festival in the Outaouais region.
