Carter Johnson

Carter Johnson grew up on Vancouver Island and began the piano at five with Shelley Roberts, studying with her for twelve years. He read music at the University of British Columbia with Mark Anderson, moved to the United States in 2019 for a master’s at the Juilliard School with Joseph Kalichstein and Matti Raekallio, and is now at the Yale School of Music with Wei-Yi Yang, finishing a doctorate.

In 2025 he won the Dublin International Piano Competition, was silver laureate at Honens, and reached the final of the Van Cliburn. His earlier first prizes include the International Competition of Polish Music in 2021, the Concours Hauts-de-France in 2023 and the Heida Hermanns in 2024; in 2018 he took the grand prize at the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal’s competition and first prize in the Canadian Music Competition’s Stepping Stone.

He has played with the Montréal Symphony, the Toronto Symphony, the Utah Symphony, the Fort Worth Symphony, the Calgary Philharmonic, the RTÉ National Symphony and the Polish National Radio Symphony, and has given recitals at Weill Recital Hall, Merkin Hall and Spivey Hall.

He also plays the harpsichord, and holds a diploma with distinction in speech and drama from Trinity College London. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, Hannah, and their three children, and cooks and gardens when he is not at the piano.