Born into a musical family deeply rooted in the performing arts, Charles Anthony Marsh is exploring his passions through music composition. His musical formation was inevitable, given that his mother, herself gifted, is a classically trained church musician, organist, and pianist.  With his aunt, an opera singer, and his uncle, a big band conductor and arranger, his family gave him both breadth and depth of musical exposure.

Charles showed musical promise at a very early age. He began formal piano training at Temple University Preparatory School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  He continued his musical studies at Valley Forge Military Academy where he studied organ under the tutelage of VFMA Choir Director Col. Krine Westhoven who soon appointed Charles student conductor of the choir. As conductor, he also arranged marches and drum solos for Field Music, the drum and bugle corps, wherein he held the coveted position of “Drum Major” for three years.

VFMA provided unusual musical opportunities outside its legendary campus. A member of the Valley Forge Military Academy Regimental Chorus’s bass section, Charles sang with the historic Savoy Opera Company. Appearing with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the famed Academy of Music, the VFMA regimental chorus performed Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture in Russian.

Holiday concerts at the now-closed Valley Forge Music Fair included sharing the stage with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award Winner Rosemary Clooney. The following year, he was chosen to lead the Regimental Chorus at the music fair’s last Christmas concert, accompanying country-pop singer Kenny Rogers, a three-time Grammy Award winner.

After graduation from “The Forge”, Charles secured an appointment as staff organist at the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul in Center City Philadelphia, holding that noted position for five years.

University education advanced musical proficiencies. At Rowan University, his undergraduate alma mater, Charles concentrated in organ and began composing in earnest. One of his first compositions to premiere was his “Sonata in d minor for flute and organ” presented at Newark United Methodist Church in Newark, Delaware. At West Chester University, he earned a master’s degree in music theory and composition. In addition to woodwinds, organ, and piano, he has composed for full orchestra, brass, choir, and voice.

Commissions soon followed. The Charleston Black Theatre in South Carolina requested a work based on the poem, “Petals of Light”, written by Mary Brent Cantarutti. Through her poetic lyricism, Cantarutti expressed feelings of utter wonderment when viewing the West Rose window in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The eponymously titled composition, written in the baroque-style for countertenor and piano, echoes this sense of wonder while conveying to the listener a sense of sacred grandeur.

Ever broadening his musical sphere, Charles, a lover of film music, has entered the film-scoring genre and anticipates new collaborations with filmmakers, television screenwriters and other media creators.