A musician since childhood, pianist Carl Banner studied with, among others, Harold Zabrack, Leon Fleisher, Leo Smit, and Leonard Shure, and performed in numerous solo and chamber concerts from the age of 14. He was the winner of several piano competitions in St. Louis MO, where he grew up, and in Washington DC, as well as runner-up in a national competition in Texas. He continued to perform regularly while earning a PhD in cell biology from Harvard University in 1982. In 1998 he and his wife, artist Marilyn Banner, founded Washington Musica Viva, which to date has produced hundreds of chamber music concerts in the Washington DC area and elsewhere. In 2004, Banner retired from the National Institutes of Health in order to devote full time to music. With Musica Viva, he has produced concerts at the Embassies of the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Lithuania, Denmark, Israel, and the European Union, as well as at the Kennedy Center, New York's Czech Center, and the Donnell Library.

Carl Banner: My Life and Thought - Reflections on an inner life in music.

Mike Hummel traces the practical origins of Washington Musica Viva in his doctoral thesis, “Three American Artists at Midlife: Negotiating the Space Between Amateur and Professional Status”.