He is a percussionist and teacher born in Chicago, Illinois, who studied voice and percussion at the University of Iowa and the Juilliard School of Music, where he was a Saul Goodman Award winner.
Since setting out on his musical career in New York he has appeared nationally and internationally with the New York Philharmonic and has also worked with many other orchestras and ensembles that include the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the Moiseyev Dance Company of Moscow, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra and the Radio City Music Hall Orchestra.
He has also worked in the field of jazz music with artists such as Dave Brubeck, Fred Hersch and Wynton Marsalis and in the field of rock when he backed Metallica at Madison Square Garden with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. In the world of stage, radio and screen, he has appeared as a soloist on the NPR program A Prairie Home Companion, on Broadway in The Lion King and The Producers and as a studio musician he has performed on the soundtracks such as Aladdin, The Alamo, The Boys from Syracuse, The Ladykillers, The Manchurian Candidate, The Score, State and Main and Ziegfeld Follies of 1936. Other recordings he has appeared on include Songs I Heard by Harry Connick Jr., Quest by George Crumb, On the Boardwalk and The Whistler & His Dog by The Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, The Best of Brahms, The New Danes and Stravinsky the Composer, Vol. 2.
In 1993 he joined the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music and has held the position of Co-Chair of the Percussion Department.
In recent years he has been heard performing with the JazzBrasil Sextet.
Paragon Ragtime Orchestra recordings
Bring Me Back My Lovin’ Honey Boy( George Linus Cobb/ Jack Yellen)
Newport Classic NC 60069 (CD: The Whistler and His Dog)
Conductor – Rick Benjamin
Here he is on vibraphone with the JazzBrasil Sextet performing Part 1 of Hermeto Pascual’s “Viva o Rio De Janeiro”…
Sources:
- http://erikcharlston.com/about.html
- http://www.msmnyc.edu/catalog/facbio.asp?fid=108173072
- http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1054528/
- http://shopping.yahoo.com/p:Erik%20Charlston:1927345792?sort=az
- http://www.cso.org/main.taf?p=3,11,6,1&EventID=9096
- http://www.georgecrumb.net/rec/brid9069.html
- http://www.allmusicguide.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=41:17070~T3
- http://www.allmusicguide.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:jzfuxq8jld6e~T4