Canadian Pianist Carson Becke has performed extensively in Canada, Great Britain, Continental Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and the Caribbean.  A versatile pianist, he is at home as a recital and concerto soloist, chamber musician, and vocal collaborator.  He is also the director of Pontiac Enchanté, a concert series in Luskville, Quebec.  After moving to the United Kingdom in 2005 to study at the Purcell School for Young Musicians, Carson completed his undergraduate studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London.  Following studies in London, he completed a master’s degree (M.Phil.) in performance and musicology at the University of Oxford, supported generously by the Sylva Gelber Music Foundation of Canada.  He completed his doctorate (D.Phil.) in musicology at Magdalen College, University of Oxford. His doctoral studies were supported by the Canadian Centennial Scholarship Foundation.

Carson’s doctoral studies were centered on the music of Richard Strauss.  As a result of his interest in Strauss, Carson has released two albums, featuring Strauss’s early piano music and lieder (with mezzo-soprano Wallis Giunta), which are available in hard copy on his website store and on streaming platforms.  His interest in Strauss was generated by a deep interest in music written in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries more generally, and one of his missions as a pianist is to bring to light some of the music from that period that has escaped twenty-first century attention.  Composers that he has included in recent programmes include Julius Reubke, Vincent D’Indy, Alexander von Zemlinsky, and Rebecca Clarke.

As a vocal collaborator and chamber musician, Carson has shared the stage with Jack Liebeck, Robert Pomakov, Wallis Giunta, Lavinia Dames, Hinrich Alpers, Arnold Choi, Paul Marleyn, and the Ironwood Quartet, among others.  As a member of the Dolmen Ensemble, he toured the UK, Malta, Australia, and New Zealand on behalf of the Royal Over Seas League.  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/commissions by other performers/composers. They co-authored a new two-piano transcription of Johannes Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem, which they premiered with the Ewashko Singers in 2019. The duo has also presented the Canadian premieres of two arrangements by Russian pianist Dmitri Alexeev, including a concert suite from George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess, and Stravinsky’s The Firebird. They are currently working with the critically acclaimed composer Christopher Goddard to commission a new work for two pianos.  

Carson is an experienced composer and arranger: his orchestral composition Three Nocturnes was the winner of the BBC Proms/Guardian Young Composers Competition in 2007, and his short melodrama On Death (based on poetry by John Keats) was performed by members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra on BBC Radio 3.  He has written a number of virtuoso piano transcriptions of orchestral music and art song, which frequently appear on his concert programmes. His transcriptions include a Tosca Fantasy (based on themes from Puccini’s Tosca), Gustav Holst’s ‘Jupiter’ from The Planets, Gershwin’s ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’, and assorted lieder by Strauss and Wagner.  Some of these scores are available for perusal and purchase on his website store.

Carson is committed to raising awareness about climate change and other environmental challenges through music.  In a TEDx talk presented in November 2020, he highlighted ways in which concert organizations are currently not playing their part in rebuilding the classical music industry to be more environmentally sustainable, and offered a set of ideas that could help bring about structural change.  He is enacting those ideas through his directorship of the Pontiac Enchanté concert series: environmental sustainability is one of the cornerstones of its mission.  He also works closely with conductor John Warner and the Orchestra for the Earth (www.orchestrafortheearth.co.uk), a UK based ensemble that raises awareness and money for environmental issues around the UK and Europe.  

Through the Covid-19 pandemic, Carson remained busy, and participated in a number of musical projects that used technologies to work around the necessary global lockdowns. In collaboration with the Gustav Mahler Society UK, he released a video album of lieder from Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn that is available to view on YouTube, and on the Pontiac Enchanté website.  He was a jury member for the Ottawa Steinway Gallery Online Piano Competition, the Steinway Canada Young Artist Virtual Piano Competition, the Canadian Music Showcase, and the University of Ottawa Concerto Competition.  He also created a virtual lecture series on a range of musical topics for the Rideau Chorale, an Ottawa-based community choir.  

Carson lived in the United Kingdom for fifteen years: first in London, and then in Oxford.  In 2019 he moved back to his hometown of Ottawa, Canada, where he currently lives with his partner Madeline, and their energetic dog Jerry.  When he is not engaged with his various musical pursuits, he is an avid outdoorsman: in the wintertime, he is a cross-country skier and snowshoer, and in the summertime a canoeist and hiker.

Pianist Jarred Dunn won first prize and concerto award at the 7th Lithuanian International Chopin Competition (Vilnius) and is a prize winner of the 1st Jan Hoffman International Competition (Kraków). He won piano and chamber music prizes at the D. Vitti, Verona Zinetti, and Rome Premio International Competitions. He is described by critics as “a piano sound-colour magician” (Muzikos Barai), “performer with exquisite pedalling” (Ludwig van Toronto), and “technically perfect” (Belarus First Radio). His discography includes Chopin and Debussy (AFA 2019), Brahms in Solitude (Yamaha 2022), Chopin's Diary: The Mazurkas (Lexicon 2024) and the complete Górecki piano solo and duo works. He is a Yamaha Artist.

Mr. Dunn performs at Yamaha Performance Centre, Warsaw Chopin Museum, Cavatina Hall, Bordeaux Centre, NOSPR Katowice, Silesian Philharmonic, Dvorana Hall, Klavierhaus Göttingen, Vilnius Town Hall, Isabel Bader Centre, Owen Arts Center, Chapelle de Bon-Pasteur, NYC Klavierhaus, Juilliard School, New York Chopin Festival, Valley Concerts BC, Cecilia Concerts Halifax, etc. He has performed with ATMA Quartet, violinist Anna Kuk as Duo Mirago, in piano duo with Maria João-Pires and Anna Górecka, served as collaborative pianist for Brahms Summer Festival (Austria) and is artist-faculty at International Piano and Chamber Music Week (Switzerland). He has performed concertos with Lithuanian Chamber, Vilnius Cantus, Toruń, Budapest Chamber, Belarusian Radio, NOSPR Katowice, Sinfonia Toronto, and Niagara Symphonies, among many others.

His recordings have been heard on CBC, Classical 96.3FM, WWFM, WQXR, 98.7 WVMO, Belarus First, and Madison Freethought Radio/TV. CBC featured him on This is My Music, Top Thirty Under Thirty, and Five Things I Learned From Maria João-Pires. A celebrated pedagogue featured on Tonebase Piano, he has given master classes and lectures at Juilliard, SMU Meadows, Oberlin College-Conservatory, Mannes College, Bydgoszcz Academy, Katowice Academy, Royal College of Music (London), Chetham's School (Manchester), and pre-colleges in North America, Europe, and Australia. He regularly serves as a juror for national and international competitions. He studied with Andrei Gavrilov, Maria João-Pires, Katarzyna Popowa-Zydroń, Anna Górecka, Andrzej Jasiński, Dorothy Taubman, Jacob Lateiner and Yoheved Kaplinsky. For more information, visit www.jarredunn.com.

Pianist Meagan Milatz, winner of the 2024 Prix Opus ”Discovery of the Year, is “a remarkable pianist with a seemingly limitless palette of expression” (Le Devoir). Meagan regularly shares the stage with top international musicians including Andrew Wan, concertmaster of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra; Stefan Dohr, Principal Horn of the Berlin Philharmonic; cellist Matt Haimovitz; and mandolinist Avi Avital. In 2022, Meagan was named co-artistic director of HausMusique, along with cellist Cameron Crozman.

Awarded the 2024 Prix Choquette-Symcox by Fondation Jeunesses Musicales Canada, Meagan’s recent engagements have included performances with Olivier Charlier, Michel Michalakakos, Cho-Liang Lin, Peter Hanson, Olivier Charlier, Pablo Hernán Benedí, Steven Dann, and tubist Øystein Baadsvik, among others. Internationally, Meagan has performed at the New Ross Piano Festival in Ireland in 2023 - the first Canadian musician to be invited - as well as at the Edeta Arts International Chamber Music Festival where she appeared in concert in Spain with violinists Wolfgang Redik in 2024 and Kai Gleusteen, concertmaster of the Orchestra del Gran Teatre del Liceu of Barcelona, in 2022. Meagan recently embarked on a 2024 European recital tour with cellist Cameron Crozman in Italy, France, Malta, and Portugal.

Meagan has appeared as a soloist alongside orchestras such as the Edmonton, Regina, Sherbrooke, and McGill Symphonies. Meagan was top prize winner in the Shean Piano Competition, CFMTA National Piano Competition, and Canadian Music Competition, and the recipient of a Sylva Gelber Music Foundation Award. Her performances are regularly broadcast on CBC/Radio-Canada.

Meagan has a recording contract for nine albums of solo and chamber music with ATMA Classique. She recently recorded an album of music for fortepiano and natural horn alongside Louis-Pierre Bergeron, released in December 2023. She has also launched a brand-new violin-and-piano duo partnership, “Duo M”, alongside Violaine Melançon, renowned violinist and founding member of the Peabody Trio. For the 2019/2020 season, Meagan undertook a 50-concert, Canada-wide tour alongside violinist Amy Hillis as the duo “meagan&amy”, winners of the first-ever Pan-Canadian Partnership Recital Tour offered by Jeunesses Musicales Canada, Debut Atlantic, and Prairie Debut.

Meagan began her studies in Saskatchewan and holds a Master’s degree from McGill University. She is grateful to her teachers and lifelong mentors Cherith Alexander, Ilya Poletaev, Philip Chiu, and Tom Beghin with whom she was greatly privileged to study the fortepiano. Enthusiastic about helping the next generation of young musicians, she is a passionate faculty member of the “Session sonates violon et piano” of Camp Musical du Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean. Meagan lives in Montreal where she loves biking, reading outside whenever possible, and enjoying the occasional tasty pastry.