Born into a family of musical siblings, Carpenter grew up in Great Neck, Long Island, and began studying the violin at the age of six under the Suzuki method. At 12, he embarked upon learning the viola and by the time he was 16, the viola had become his primary instrument. He continued to pursue both instruments at the pre-college divisions of Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music, Italy’s Accademia Chigiana, Switzerland’s International Music Academy, and the Verbier Festival Academy, studying with Pinchas Zukerman, Roberto Diaz, Seiji Ozawa, Robert Mann, Nobuko Imai, Boris Belkin, and Yuri Bashmet.
