Alice Balint was born to Max Balint, leather merchant, and Irwa Wieg, concert pianist, in Budapest in 1897. She began piano lessons at the age of nine with her mother. Realising after three months that there was no more she could teach Alice, Irwa took her daughter to the head of the Academy of Music in Budapest, Istvan Toman. Toman taught Alice for two years, until she was 11 (1908), after which she studied at the Franz Liszt Academy, gaining her professorship at the age of 17. Around this time, Alice's mother Irwa died of cancer at the age of 51.

Alice Balint then studied with composer Béla Bartók for a year which gave her, as she put it, 'a great inspiration about sound and phrasing.' She studied next with Leo Weiner, Professor of Composition and Conducting at the Academy of Music In Budapest. Weiner also taught conductor Eugene Ormandy, concert pianist Louis Kentner and conductor Sir Georg Solti. Balint began performing in 1918, at the age of 21, first in Budapest, then Vienna, eventually embarking on a career as a concert pianist that took her all over Europe. As the effects of the Depression worsened in the early 1930s, Balint formed a small instrumental ensemble that played mainly light classical music, and began touring throughout Europe and Asia - India, Indonesia and Malaya, as it was then known. On a tour of Malaya in 1937, Balint met and married Louis Carrard, a French-Swiss engineer who was managing a tin mine. While living in Malaya, World War II broke out, and their son George Sandor (Sandy) was born.

In the latter part of 1941, Alice and two-year-old Sandy Carrard visited Perth, Western Australia, for a holiday, intending to return to Malaya and join Louis for Christmas. They were prevented from doing this by the Japanese invasion of Malaya on December 7. While attempting to escape, Louis was captured and interned for the remainder of the war in a Japanese prison camp. Alice and Sandy settled in Perth, and Sandy began attending Christ Church school. At some point Louis had managed to send some of their belongings to Perth, including, amazingly, Alice's Hungarian grand piano. Louis travelled to Perth after his release in 1946. Severely affected by his internment and badly malnourished, he was unable to cope in Perth and returned to Malaya. He and Alice remained good friends, and he continued to support his family and visit.

Alice Carrard also supported herself and Sandy by playing recitals, many of which were for the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission). She is credited with introducing Bartok to Western Australian audiences, and was the first to play his Third Piano Concerto in Perth. By 1960 she was famous across Australia on the concert circuit and for radio broadcasts. She began teaching in 1945, and built up a formidable reputation for excellence and exacting standards. Carrard had a number of star pupils, including Japanese prodigy Yasuko Toba, who became a scholar at the Julliard School and has an international career as a concert pianist. Most famously, Carrard taught David Helfgott, who she first encountered as a teenager. Upon his return from London after a severe nervous breakdown in the early 1970s, Carrard made sure he had appropriate psychiatric care and continued to give him lessons while he was institutionalised at Graylands, a psychiatric facility in Perth. His triumphant return to performing brought Carrard immense joy, and she commented on many occasions that he was her favourite pupil. Helfgott's story was dramatised in the Australian movie Shine (1996).

Carrard was awarded an MBE in 1976 for her services to music, and gold and silver diplomas from the Franz Liszt Academy for over fifty years of teaching excellence. At a concert in 1992 to celebrate her 95th birthday, Carrard performed Beethoven's last Piano Sonata, Opus 111 in C Minor, a deeply emotional and technically demanding work, written late in life when he was deaf and his health failing. Carrard had played it at her first performance in 1918, and received a standing ovation when she performed it at the Western Australian Conservatorium of Music in 1992. She was named a Living Treasure of the State of Western Australia in 1998, and died in March, 2000, at the age of 102.

Sources used to compile this entry: 'Obituary: Alice Carrard', Music Teacher's Bulletin, Music Teachers' Association, Perth, Western Australia, 2000; Cohn, Neville, 'Alice Carrard – 95 Years Young', Arts West , vol. 2, no. 4, Troubadour Publications, Melville, Western Australia, 1992; Cohn, Neville, 'Australian Heritage Series: Alice Carrard', Soundscapes, vol. 2, no. 2, Soundscapes Australia, Mount Gravatt, Queensland, 1995; Hoffman, Leila, 'Alice Carrard', in West Australian Music Makers, Self Published/Typescript, Perth, Western Australia, 1987; Schmitt, Hugh, 'At 90, music is still her first love...', West Australian, West Australian Newspapers, Perth, Western Australia, 1987.