[1][2] Born in Portland, Oregon to a father who was a jazz musician and a mother who was an artist focusing mostly on sculpting, Carl's parents moved to Los Angeles, where he grew up, before he was 2 years old.
1 at his high school graduation, was the principal horn in the American youth symphony under Mehli Mehta as well as an extra horn with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the American Ballet Theatre, and spent three summers on scholarship at the Music Academy of the West in Montecito under Maurice Abravanel, where he performed Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Wind Quartet and Orchestra, Robert Schumann's Konzertstück for Four Horns and Orchestra, Antonín Dvořák's Serenade for Wind Instruments, and Mozart's Serenade No.
Carl began studying voice in 1975 and went back to Juilliard a year later at age 26 as a singer in their American Opera Center (AOC) professional program.
[4] He studied with Nina Hinson, Raymond Buckingham, Dan Merriman, Armen Boyajian, Robin M. Williams, and briefly with Richard Torigi while at the AOC, which ended after just a few lessons when he told Carl, "You have a very ugly voice and should quit."
In the spring of 1988, while sitting in the Pier 72 Diner on 72nd Street and West End Avenue in New York City, Carl read an ad for a bass in an a cappella group called Rockapella in Backstage.
[5] That summer, while Carl worked with the Minnesota Opera, Altman and Kerman asked him to be in the group and sent him a stack of music to learn.
Over the 14 years he spent with the band, Carl wrote five songs on the 15 CDs he appears on with Rockapella: "Give" (with Masahiro Ikumi and Scott Leonard), "Island Christmas" (Bash!
), "Fat Jack & Bonefish Joe" (with Lisa S. Johnson), "Quiet Sensation" (Vocobeat), and "Bored & Stroked" (Out Cold); arranged the group's cover of "Love Me Tender" (Lucky Seven); and performed numerous bass solos for songs both on and not included in Rockapella's albums.
This regrouping of the 1988–1991 line up of Rockapella was originally scheduled to occur only twice: once as a practice gig on July 26, 2008,[10] and a second time at the 2008 A Cappellastock in Ogden, Utah on August 23.
: Earth Rock soundtrack called "You Oughta Be Savin' Water"; Carl is also one of the singers on another Altman song on the same album titled "Save the Ocean".