In the program for his 1982 Toot n’ Blink Chicago performance, Charlie Morrow (1942-) began by describing himself thus: “Last but perhaps first, I am a horn player and amateur radio operator since childhood.” Indeed, it was at the age of eleven when he began to study trumpet, and twelve that Morrow learned Morse code and earned KN2LIS and K2LIS amateur radio licenses with the New York FCC. By fifteen, he was steeped in the methods of serialism and techniques of orchestration, and he composed his “first real work,” Very Slow Gabrieli - the first of many pieces demonstrating a prescience in its deployment of conceptual strategies towards phenomenal ends.

Morrow’s biography as an artist is not easy to summarize. His more than seventy years of creative work have been not only extraordinarily prodigious but extraordinarily interdisciplinary.

He has composed operas, radio broadcasts, soundtracks, manifestos and chants, and has performed at Carnegie Hall and the San Francisco Opera House. His recordings include a string of releases on New Wilderness Audiographics, a label which he founded and ran with Ondina Fioria, and multiple anthologies released on Sean McCann’s Recital label. His commercial work, which has often overlapped with his other creative pursuits, has included innumerable jingles (including an aircheck for New York’s 1010 WINS Radio), film and television programs, and, more recently, immersive sound design, a field in which he is, as in so many other contexts, on the cutting edge. He may be best known for his large-scale spectacles, including as many as 100 participants, variously scored for conch shells, drum and bugle corps, harps, and boats.