Charles William Porter (born May 10, 1978 - Boynton Beach, Florida)^[1][2] known professionally as Charlie Porter is an American trumpeter, composer and music educator based in Portland, Oregon. Porter has been awarded a Grammy Award at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards for his collaboration on the album Songplay, in 2020.^[3][4] He has recorded many albums as a side musician, and has released two albums as a leader.^[5][6][7]

Charlie Porter was born in Boynton Beach, Florida. He studied trumpet at the Dreyfoos School of the Arts, The Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music and was a Fulbright Scholar at the Paris Conservatory, conservatoire à rayonnement régional de Paris.^[8][9] His mentors include Wynton Marsalis, Mark Gould, Raymond Mase, Guy Touvron, and Laurie Frink.^[10][11][12]

Porter started in the New York jazz scene in the 1990s while studying classical music under the trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis at the Juilliard School.^[13] He is a long-standing member of the Absolute Ensemble, directed by Kristjan Järvi, with which he has recorded nine albums, one of which Absolution was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2002,^[14][15] and another Mix, Bach Reinvented which won the coveted German Critics Award in 2000.^[16] Porter is currently known to be a frequent member of several ensembles, including the Charlie Porter Quintet, The Alan Jones Sextet and the Chuck Israels Jazz Orchestra.^[17][18] He has toured as both a band-leader and a side-man as both a jazz and classical musician, as well as acting in the soloist and chamber music scene.^[19] Porter was the first musician to ever be awarded 1st Prize in the National Trumpet Competition in both Jazz and Classical and he reached the semi-final round in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Trumpet Competition hosted in Los Angeles.^[20] In 2005, as a composer, Porter was the recipient of Chamber Music America and The Dorris Duke Foundation's New Works commissioning grant in 2005.^[21] As a bandleader, he released his debut self-titled album, Charlie Porter, in 2018 under PHP Records, and Immigration Nation in 2019 under Origin Records, to critical acclaim in major publications, including DownBeat and Jazziz.^[22] Porter currently is an adjunct professor of jazz trumpet at Portland State University.^[23]

• Charlie Porter (PHP, 2018)
• Immigration Nation (Origin, 2019)

With Philip Glass

• Kundun: Music from the Original Soundtrack (Nonesuch, 1997)
• Aguas Da Amazonia (Orange Mountain, 2017)

With Absolute Ensemble

• Chamber Symphonies: Adams, Schoenberg (CCn'C, 1999)
• Absolute Mix (CCn’C, 2000)
• Absolution (Enja, 2000)
• Absolute Fix (Enja Nova, 2002)
• Absolute Zappa (2007)
• Absolute Zawinul (Intuition, 2009)
• Arabian Nights: Live at Town Hall NYC (Enja, 2011)
• Bach Re-Invented (Sony Classical, 2013)

With Paquito D'Rivera

• Habanera (Enja, 2000)

With Tristan Murail

• Winter Fragments (æon, 2006 )

With Billy Martin

• Starlings (Tzadik, 2006)

With Anthony Coleman

• Pushy Blueness (Tzadik, 2006)

With Russ Spiegel

• Transplants (Ruzztone, 2009)

With Majid Khaliq

• The Basilisk (2010)
• Sound of a Flower (2018)

With Chuck Israels

• Joyful Noise (Soulpatch, 2015)
• Garden of Delights (Dot Time, 2016)
• Concerto Peligroso (Dot Time, 2017)
• Bass Intentions (Soulpatch, 2019)

With Alan Jones

• Storyline (2015)

With Derek Hines

• The Long Journey Home (2017)

With Various

• Babylon Berlin Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (BMG, 2017)

With Joyce DiDonato^[24]

• Songplay (Erato, 2019)

• Sound-World Duets, 2015^[25]

• 1st Place in Juilliard Quadrennial Trumpet Concerto Competition, 1996^[26]
• 2nd Place The International Trumpet Guild Solo Competition, 1998, 1999
• 1st Place The National Trumpet Competition, Classical Solo Division, 1999^[27]
• 1st Place The National Trumpet Competition, Jazz Division, 2000^[28]
• 2019, Grammy Award for Songplay

• Official website
• Charlie Porter at AllMusic