Biography
Charlie Griffin has enjoyed a thirty-plus year career as a composer, writer, educator, and arts administrator.
With his music played in over twenty countries, performers have chosen his work for presentation at conferences (PASIC, NFA, ACDA), festivals (Aspen, Spoleto), and notable venues like the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, and the American Cathedral in Paris. Other career highlights include performances by the St. Louis Symphony, the Orlando Philharmonic, and the Dale Warland Singers.
His lectures and classes have brought him to Hofstra University, Teacher’s College at Columbia University, the U.S. Embassies in Latvia and Lithuania, and the Epcot International Festival of the Arts at Walt Disney World. He moved to Orlando in 2010 to help launch a BS degree in Music Production at Full Sail University.
Active in the Orlando area, he is the founder and first president of the Central Florida Composers Forum, and has been a large budget panelist for United Arts of Central Florida, a radio show host on WPRK 91.5fm, and the music columnist for Artborne Magazine.
Griffin embraces creativity in many forms: improv comedy, standup comedy, and acting. In May of 2017, his one hour sketch-prov comedy show, Biblical Fan Fiction, enjoyed a 5-show run at the Orlando Fringe Festival. Shortly thereafter, he embarked on a second degree: a BFA in Creative Writing for Entertainment on faculty scholarship at Full Sail University.
From 2005-10 he relocated to Latvia from New York, where he worked on projects with his own 8-piece ensemble as well as commissions from regional sources, such as several works for the Riga-based women’s vocal ensemble Putni, a large work for organ, timpani and 30-voice choir to mark the 6th International Organ Music Festival in Liepaja, and a large work for electronics, flute quartet, dancers and video for a premiere in Riga in 2010, with premieres following in Sweden and Lithuania. He acted as co-administrator of New Music Incubator, an international collaborative project between composers and performers from Baltic and Scandinavian countries.
He has received grants from ASCAP, Meet the Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA, Queens Council on the Arts and New Dramatists, and commissions from Ethos Percussion Group, the Piedmont Choirs, and the Dale Warland Singers, among others. His work has been included on several Compact Discs and has regularly been aired on radio stations such as WNYC and WQXR in New York, WGBH in Boston and WHPK in Chicago.
His several residencies have included Faith Partners (an interfaith residency in New York City funded by the Wolfensohn Family Foundation involving Temple Emanu-el, St. Bartholomew’s Church and St. Ignatius-Loyola, where he composed four choral works for the three institutions), another choral residency at the Frank Sinatra High School for the Arts, and during the summers 2004 and 2006 at the International Festival for Young Latvian Musicians, in Ogre, Latvia. He was elected into the Latvian Composer’s Union in 2006.
He earned his B. A. in voice and composition and M. A. in composition from Queens College, City University of New York, and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. He is a member of ASCAP, former Director of the New York Chapter of the American Composers Forum, and was on the board of directors of the Long Island Composers Alliance for several years.
Press
“Starting off the program was Griffin’s Vernacular Dances, which plays off popular styles (Latin rhythms, blues, jazz) in a very serious way. This muscular work, expertly played by pianist Perry Townsend, was the strongest of the concert.” New Music Connoisseur, Vol. 5, No. 4
Oriental Poppies by Charles Griffin. Centered around a short descending motif, the movement here is fueled by imaginative quasi-improvised melodic figures and an ever-shifting rhythmic emphasis.”
Paul Fowles – Classical Guitar
“…most of all, Charles Griffin’s “El Paso de la Siguiriya,” on a dark, dreamy Federico Garcia Lorca poem. “El Paso” is a flamenco a cappella fantasy with episodes of rhythmic clapping, melisma inflected in the Andalusian way and choruses in Spanish dance rhythms. Mezzo Rebecca Davies was ravishing in the solo that is the soul of this piece. She must have listened to a great deal of flamenco singing to prepare; she was at once elegant and earthy. Much of the choral work in “El Paso” is in free rhythm. Hansen shaped it with a soloist’s latitude. Seventeen voices responded, and the choir became a single voice.”
Tom Strini – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Charles Griffin’s 1998 “Persistence of Past Chemistries” opened the concert, a composition of teasing rhythms for mallet keyboards intermingling jazz with the repetitive nature of minimalism. Again, as throughout the hour, the four musicians, unidentified, accomplished wondrous feats of coordination and sound production. Those mallets moved so fast they almost disappeared before one’s eyes.”
Peter Jacobi – Herald Times, Bloomington Indiana
“The San José Chamber Orchestra opened its season with Charles Griffin’s “Weaving Olden Dances,” a big 31-minute, four-movement work of modern sounds laid over traditional forms—a well-made piece avoiding the expected clichés. Griffin enters skillfully into disparate realms. An agitated timpani opening gives way to a perpetual-motion ostinato inspired by the gamelan. The Pavane section that follows is lovely, escapist romanticism soaring skyward. The 3rd movement is the most overtly dance-like, with the orchestra parroting the broad strums of the flamenco guitar running through modes as well as the beat of the zapateado dance—a latino tap dance without the tap shoes. The finale, after Irish models, is a joyous noise rushing to a climax. The format idea is derived from the dance suites so prevalent 300 years ago. There were various solos throughout, none more notable nor more praiseworthy than on viola (Eleanor Angel) and cello (Lucinda Breed Lenicheck). ”
Paul Hertelendy – artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance
“The surprise came in the form of Griffin’s four-movement Concerto for Chamber Orchestra. A sort of Baroque dance-suite, the music opened with a Trance Overture, in the manner of the gamelan orchestra of Bali, percussive, chiming, clangorous, brash, and declamatory. Long pedal points punctuated the interlocking rhythmic impulses. The 2nd movement, Pavane, sounded like a medieval consort, utilizing a concertante violin to intone a 13th-century cantus firmus. The 3rd movement enjoyed a concertante cello opening. The music became quite syncopated, and at its climax became a fugue in flamenco style. The last movement began with a viola that lisped in Irish accents, inviting us to a fierce gigue or reel. Almost every member of the orchestra had a virtuoso, solo run or riff to offer the color of his contribution. Eclectic it was certainly, ending with something like a sea-shanty in Technicolor. But, that it was a successful vehicle for Turner and her SJCO there could be no doubt.”
Gary Lemco – The Classical Music Guide Online
“Charles Griffin’s Rekviem is a beautiful requiem — dark, almost threatening.”
KEN BULLOCK – San Francisco Classical Voice
“The other premiere was Charles Griffin’s Panta Rei, a pulsing, fast, free-flowing piece of tight, dense textures and few open spaces, save for an island of rather uneasy repose in the middle.”
The Buffalo News
“Charles Griffin’s Concentric Dance, with [its] complicated rhythmic and contrasting sections, [was] gripping from beginning to end.”
review of Mariah Wind Trio at U of OK Clarfest – The Clarinet
“Charles Griffin’s Fragmentary Rondo for solo flute should join the ranks of standard repertory.”
Steven Rosenhaus – New Music Connoisseur, Vol. 5, No. 3
“The first section’s freely tonal sound made for many wonderful moments which can only be described as spooky and funky. The second section was beautifully canonic which, if it lacked the harmonic interest of the opening, was extremely musical. It was enjoyed by the hall.”
Alf Bishai, NY Chief Correspondent – Film Music Magazine