Forest Benson: CBC Music 30 hot Canadian classical musicians under 30
A huge round of applause for Forest Benson, VSO School of Music piano student of Dr. Bogdan Dulu, for making the CBC Music: 30 hot Canadian classical musicians under 30, 2026 edition! Forest won the 2026 Future of Excellence Competition (Senior Division) and will get the chance to appear as a soloist in concert with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
18 year old Forest shares the below with CBC:
“My biggest inspiration is not a pianist, not even a musician, but a figure skater by the name of Yuzuru Hanyu,” said Forest Benson. “He completely entranced me when I first saw him on YouTube in 2018 [and] he showed me the importance of expression that I carried into my piano playing.” Benson’s expressiveness at the keyboard recently earned him first prize in the senior division of the VSO School of Music’s Future of Excellence Concerto Competition, securing an opportunity to play Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the VSO next season. This month, he’s attending Pianofest in the Hamptons, and in September he’ll begin his studies at the Glenn Gould School in Toronto. And yet, there’s more to life than piano for Benson: he practises kendo and iaido (sword-based martial arts) and he loves singing. “I may not have the most beautiful tone or impressive range,” he admitted, but “the rawness of the voice touches my heart the most.”