Charlie Griffin is the founder and Executive Director of the Central Florida Composers Forum. He has enjoyed a career spanning over thirty years 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, Teachers’ 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 has been a frequent 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 various forms, including improv comedy, stand-up 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 to the Latvian Composers’ Union in 2006. He earned his B.A. in voice and composition, his M.A. in composition, and his Ph.D. from Queens College, City University of New York, and the University of Minnesota, respectively. He is a member of ASCAP, a 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. 

Learn more at http://charlesgriffin.net