About

Winfield B. Carson V (b. 1995), was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When he was only a year old his parents moved to Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, which is 18 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Carson began playing music when he was 11 after deciding to join the school band. After a few years of being in the school band Carson decided to study piano under composer, Michael Karwowski. Karwowski taught him the fundamentals of harmony through Arnold Schoenberg's book Structural Functions of Harmony. In 2011, Carson began attending The Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School in Midland, Pennsylvania where he studied under the composer in residents, Todd Goodman. In 2014, Carson began his studies at The Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University where he received his bachelor’s in music composition. During his time at Peabody, Carson primarily studied under Rome Prize and Berlin Prize winning composer, Michael Hersch. While at Peabody, Carson also studied with other world-renowned composers such as Felipe Lara, Amy Beth Kirsten, and Jason Eckardt. Carson has attended many prestigious music festivals such as, the HighScore Music Festival in Pavia, Italy and the Atlantic Music Festival in Maine at the Colby College. In September of 2018, Carson made his debut at The Carnegie Hall in New York City where his piece for solo piano, Death and Resurrection was premiered by pianist Huizi Zhang.

When Carson was pursuing his master’s in music composition at the San Francisco Conservatory he studied under composer, David Garner. During Carson’s time at the conservatory his music was featured on a concert put on by The Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) and The University of California San Francisco (UCSF). The concert was called The Other Side of the Brain: Exploring Emotion and Music in Dyslexia. At this concert, vocalist Kathryn Rupp and pianist Geoffrey Lee performed his piece Dies Irae. Another important performance that occurred at the San Francisco Conservatory was the premier of Choral Fantasia for the Death of Eleven, which was a piece written to commemorate the eleven lives lost in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018.