Member
Contact Information
Location
Seattle, Washington
Early Music Skills & Interests
Recorder, Renaissance Winds, Vielle
Early Music Affiliations
Biography
Charles Coldwell began his early music career as a musician at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1968. Since then he has performed on Baroque and Renaissance recorders, early winds, and vielle in solo recitals and ensembles throughout the United States. Locally, he has been featured as a recorder soloist with the Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Northwest Baroque, the Northwest Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonia Northwest, and at Seattle's Bumbershoot Festival; and he has appeared on concerts presented by the Tudor Choir, St. Mark's Cathedral Associates, and The Early Music Guild of Seattle. Charles holds a Master of Music degree in the Performance of Early Music from the New England Conservatory of Music. He has served on the faculties of the New England Conservatory and the Longy School of Music as an instructor in recorder and historical performance practices, and was a co-founder of the undergraduate degree program in early music at Longy. He has been a faculty member at early music workshops held at Castle Hill (Ipswich, Massachusetts), Port Townsend, San Francisco, and Hudson Guild Farm (NJ), and for several seasons performed as a musician at the American Shakespeare Festival (Stratford, Connecticut). Charles founded Editions Dolcimelo in 2003, which specializes in publishing high quality performing editions and transcriptions for recorders of music from the Renaissance and Baroque eras. In 2012 he retired from the Seattle Public Library where he served as manager of the Fine and Performing Arts Department, and later Library Applications & Systems. Charles was the 2014 Recorder Resident at the Sitka Center for the Art and Ecology. Currently, he co-directs the Recorder Orchestra of Puget Sound with Vicki Boeckman, for which he has arranged music from the 16th-20th centuries.