>View CV (updated Sept. 2025).

Charlie Zhong is a Shanghai-born composer and songwriter. Charlie writes music that is ever-changing in shape and identity—from the old to the new; the neon to the gray; the Eastern to the Western; the boring to the uncanny; and the many colored lines in-between. Charlie's debut album as a songwriter, Angels Under the Moonbeam, was released in May 2025. The album features 8 tracks of fully original songs and runs about 35 minutes long.

Charlie was a winner of the 2023 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards; the 1st place winner of the 2023 American Prize in Composition, music for orchestra (high school division); the inaugural winner of the DeKalb Symphony Orchestra Young Composers Competition, which led to the commissioning and premiere of “Stilling Memory” by the DeKalb Symphony Orchestra during their 2023-24 season; a winner of the 2021 National Young Composers Challenge, which included the world premiere of “Like a Single Star in the Night Sky” by the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra in 2022; an Honorable Mention in the 2023 BMI Composer Awards; and the 1st place winner of the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra of New York’s Emerging Composers Competition (2022-23). He has also been awarded the ASCAP Foundation Irving Berlin Summer Music Camp Scholarship (2022).

Charlie has studied privately with Tak Cheung Hui, David Hodgkins, Julien Siino, and Marco Flores-Villanueva. His works often find inspiration from composers like David Lang, Lei Liang, Kaija Saariaho, and Eric Wubbels. Some of Charlie's influences can also be found in the songs of Paul Simon, David Bowie, and Elton John.

Charlie is currently an undergraduate at Yale University, and has spent his summers studying music at The Walden School, Boston University Tanglewood Institute, and the Longy School of Music.