Schumacher Young Artist Competition Winner 2025
James will be performing Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor with the Cleveland Philharmonic on May 3rd and 4th, 2025.
James Carson, 15, began studying piano at the age of six in the Bay Area, California. Since relocating to Cleveland in 2020, James has been studying with Gerardo Teissonnière, piano faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
James has earned high recognition in piano competitions and festivals abroad and locally. At the age of seven, he won the Grand Prize in the San Jose Youth Focus music event and later placed in the US Open Music Competition in Oakland, California.
More recently, at the 2022 Perugia Music Festival in Italy, James was selected to perform Haydn’s Piano Concerto in D Major with the festival orchestra. In 2023, he was an alternate for the inaugural Nashville Chopin International Piano Competition in Nashville, Tennessee. Locally, he was an alternate for the Ohio Buckeye State Piano Competition. In 2024, he was named a semifinalist in the David Dubois International Piano Competition and a Grand Finalist in the Piano Star International Competition. He is also selected to perform at the Piano Star International winner’s concert at Carnegie Hall in June 2025.
On the side, James also plays the violin in the Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School orchestra, and at local venues as part of an all-sophomore string quartet – Prima Corda. He does keyboard for his church worship team and is on his high school’s soccer and Academic Challenge teams.