Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Charles began taking piano lessons at the age of 5 and began composing at age 12. He moved to Baltimore in 1990 to attend the Johns Hopkins University. In 2002 Charles moved to Los Angeles to further pursue his music career. He has worked on various films inluding Solaris (2002), Wonderland (2003) and Wicker Park (2004) as a music programmer and additional music composer as well as working on his own solo projects. Charles scored the short film, "Together," directed by Sunghee Hong. He recently completed composing music for the upcoming feature film, First Snow, directed by Mark Fergus.