SongVault Artist Profile

Charlene worked in music and theatre on both the east and the west coasts before coming to Washington, DC to study acting at the Shakespeare Theatre. She has written a critically celebrated score to Bertolt Brecht’s Life of Galileo and has since composed the soundtracks for a number of independent film projects, including a documentary on the Falun Gong, entitled “With the Strength of Belief” and “The Finnian Cycle”, an independent film making the festival rounds.

While clearly a descendent of Romantics like Liszt and Chopin, Charlene takes much of her inspiration from literature, and the compositions which make up her ambitious debut album, Flickering Images, are derived from some her favorite works, John Nichols' The Wizard of Loneliness, Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Michael Malone's Handling Sin, and other pieces from works by Dickens, Henry James, and John Keats.

Charlene's compositions have been described as "delicate and haunting," by The Washington Post and, when coupled with her sensitive touch on the piano, transport the listener into the stories, themselves.