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Sarah Ellis, James Buhler, Charles, and Kevin Clifton at the 2013 Texas Society for Music Theory Conference |
He has published an article on Max Steiner in The Journal of Film Music, and has presented research papers on Max Steiner at meetings of the Rocky Mountain Society for Music Theory, the Indiana State University Contemporary Music Festival, and the Max Steiner "Man and Myth" Symposium. He is the author of Ennio Morricone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: A Film Score Guide, edited by Kate Daubney and published by Scarecrow Press. He is a contributing author to the anthology Music in the Western: Notes from the Frontier, compiled and edited by Kathryn Kalinak and published by Routledge. He published an article on the use of the solo trumpet in the soundtrack of western films in the March 2015 International Trumpet Guild Journal, and presented a lecture on this topic at the 2016 ITG Conference, the 2016 Rocky Mountain Regional Conference of the College Music Society, the 2017 Hawaii University International Conference on the Arts and Humanities, and Music and the Moving Image XII (2017). He is the author of "Ministerial First Responders," in the March 2020 ITG Journal, a short article on the experiences of playing trumpet at memorial services following a tragedy. He has lectured on the music of Morricone at the Manhattan School of Music, Northwestern University, the University of Leeds, a meeting of the Rocky Mountain Society for Music Theory, the Hawaii University International Conference on the Arts and Humanities, a meeting of the Texas Society for Music Theory, a meeting of Music Theory Midwest, Music and the Moving Image VIII (2013), Music and the Moving Image XVI (2020). He has also presented original research of Mozart's use of augmented sixth chords at the Rocky Mountain Society for Music Theory.
His book reviews have appeared in The Journal of Film Music, Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, and Cineaste. He has also reviewed books for Elsevier, Norton, Oxford University Press, Pearson, Prentice-Hall, Thomson-Schirmer, the Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, Bloomsbury, and Lexington Books. He served on a committee to design the Introduction to Music exam for Excelsior College, an institution specializing in distance learning.
Since 2012, He has been a reader for the Advanced Placement Music Theory Exam. Since 2012, Charles also has been the announcer at concerts by the UTEP Symphony Orchestra. Each spring from 2012 to 2019, before the orchestra's annual concert of music from the movies, he presented a pre-concert talk titled "Music? What Music?" Since 2014, he has been a regular at the Plaza Theatre Classic Film Festival, introducing films, including The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Cowboy, and Now, Voyager. He has also presented Film Talks at the festival, preceding screenings of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Back to the Future, Psycho, and Amadeus.
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Charles performing at the 2016 International Trumpet Guild Conference's "Festival of Trumpets" |
He earned his Bachelor of Music degree in trumpet performance from Northern Arizona University. While at NAU, he was a member of the Flagstaff Symphony Orchestra. He also studied trumpet with Carl Hendrickson, Edward Hoffman, and Charles Way. His music theory teachers at NAU were Dr. Kenneth Rumery and Dr. Michael Shott. While in Flagstaff, he worked in the retail grocery business.
He earned his Master of Music degree in music theory from the University of Miami. During his two years at U of M, he was fortunate enough to study trumpet with Gilbert Johnson. His music theory teachers at U of M were Dr. Fred Coulter, and Dr. Dennis Kam. Before beginning his doctoral studies, he was out of school for several years, during which time he spent one year as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Miami, teaching undergraduate music theory courses. He also worked in the retail record-and-tape business in Miami for a few years.
After moving to Seattle, Washington, he studied trumpet with Charles Butler and was a member of the Bellevue Philharmonic Orchestra and the Washington Wind Symphony. In addition to his purely musical interests, he also spent several years as a club deejay and radio personality in Seattle.
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Charles performing with the El Paso Diocesan Choir and Orchestra at UTEP's Sun Bowl Stadium for "Two Nations, One Faith," which was linked by satellite with Pope Francis' visit to Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. |
In 1998, Charles and his wife moved to El Paso, Texas, where Charles joined the music faculty of the University of Texas at El Paso. Since that time, he has been a member of the Quintessential Brass and has also performed with the Edge of Texas Concert Band, the El Paso Chorale, the El Paso Opera Orchestra, the El Paso Symphony Orchestra, the El Paso Wind Symphony, the Las Cruces Symphony Orchestra, the NMSU Choirs, the Southwest Chamber Consortium, the UTEP Dinner Theater, and the UTEP Trumpet Ensemble. He was recently a member of Windy City, El Paso's tribute band to Chicago. He performs regularly at Saint Luke Catholic Church and with the El Paso Diocesan Choir and Orchestra. After attending an ACTS Retreat in 2013, he served on the ACTS Music Ministry for Saint Luke and Saint Matthew Catholic Churches from 2014 through 2018.
He is fluent in the use of Finale Music Notation Software, Adobe Acrobat Pro, and Microsoft Office (Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word). He is an experienced user of Ellucian (formerly Sungard Higher Education), DNN, Noteflight, Qualtrics, and QuestionPro web-based software. He has been writing HTML, like the code for this page, since he created his first web site in the mid-1990s.
Charles is a member of the International Trumpet Guild, the Society for Music Theory, and the Texas Society for Music Theory. He recently served on the Executive Board of the Texas Society for Music Theory and hosted the 37th Annual Meeting of that organization at UTEP in 2015.
