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. As a student in the music department of SUNY Buffalo (1969-70), he played with the Creative Associates, including a concert of new music at Carnegie Hall in NY. After alternate service as a conscientious objector at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda MD during the Viet Nam war, he earned a BS in Zoology from the U. of MD, and went on to Harvard University, earning his PhD in Cellular and Developmental Biology in 1982. During his studies, he continued to perform in solo and chamber music concerts, founding several music groups including one at the NIH, where he worked in Program and in Review administration for 20 years. In 1998 he and his wife, artist Marilyn Banner, founded Washington Musica Viva, which to date has produced hundreds of chamber music and arts events 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”.