Charlie’s creativity as an arranger was recognised from a young age when at just sixteen, he worked as a staff arranger on the 2018 Woman to Woman tour with UK chart-topping singer-songwriters Beverly Craven (“Promise Me”), Julia Fordham (“Porcelain”) and Judie Tzuke (“Stay with Me till Dawn”). 

He had started to experiment with arranging shortly after joining Chetham’s School of Music as a student in 2012 and subsequently received his first commission from a student-led pops orchestra. But it wasn’t until the latter four of his eight years as a student there that he began taking formal and regular composition and arranging lessons, most notably with trumpeter/composer Richard Iles. He then continued studying big band writing with Stan Sulzmann and Nikki Iles while specialising in saxophone as a student at the Royal Academy of Music (2020-2024).

He spent the last several years working on a big band project with English saxophonist Martin Speake (Speake’s music, arranged by Charlie). Many of those arrangements were performed by the London Jazz Orchestra regularly throughout their 2022 and 2023 seasons, with Charlie also playing in and directing the band on occasion during this time. Other notable work with big bands includes a piece commissioned in the 2019 Cambridge International Jazz Festival in dedication to Marty Paich, and multiple arrangements for the Greater Manchester Hub Jazz Orchestra throughout his time on sax in the band between 2017 – 2019.