|
 Student in the news: Carson Becke
Carson Becke turned seventeen this June. An Ottawa native, he is currently studying at the Purcell School of Music in London, England. There, he studies piano with Ilana Davids and composition with Jonothan Cole. He started playing piano at the age of five with his great-grandmother Mary Mackey, who is an honourary member of the Ottawa Branch of ORMTA. He studied with her for ten years.
Carson has recently performed twice at the Eastman School of Music International Piano Competition in Rochester, New York. In 2005, he placed second at the Ontario Registered Music Teachers’ Competition in Mississauga, and over the years has consistently placed first at the Kiwanis Music Festival. In England, he has performed in the Leighton Buzzard concert hall and will be featured in the Leeds Lunchtime Concert Series in March of 2007.
In April 2006 he tied for first place at the Rachmaninov International Piano Competition in Veliky Novgorod, Russia. Carson is the first non-Russian to become a Laureate in the competition. Adjudicators included the Russian teacher Vladimir Chiniev and Deirdre Doyle, Head of Keyboards at the Royal Irish Academy of Music.
An athlete, Carson enjoys running, skiing, soccer, tennis as well as canoeing with his father and uncle each summer through Algonquin Park. He loves to read and is an avid collector of CDs.
In June 2006, he gave two recitals in Dublin, Ireland, which were commissioned by the Canadian Ambassador to Ireland and Deirdre Doyle. Also this summer he was a finalist at the prestigious Oberlin International Piano Competition in Oberlin, Ohio.
Carson’s talents are not exclusive to piano performance. This summer his composition “Three Orchestral Nocturnes for Solo Piano” placed third in the European Piano Teachers’ Composition Competition. He is proud of and jokes about the title as it doesn’t make any sense, and you can tell that he is quite amazed and modest about this newly found gift.
As a fitting end to this year’s public performance calendar, Carson will be performing with fellow student Evelyne Berezovsky, daughter of Boris Berezovsky, at Wigmore Hall in London, England on the evening of September 17th.
After finishing high school in London next year, Carson intends to go on to complete a four-year music program at either the Eastman School of Music in New York or the Tchaikovsky School of Music in Russia.
I would like to thank his parents, Debbie and Peter, his grandmother, Ruth Mary Harris, his great-grandmother, Mary Mackey, and Carson himself for providing this information.
Here’s to Carson!
Ann Empey |
