Dr. Charlie Wall-Andrews’ release LUNAR: Brass Chorale was launched on January 16, 2026 at the Girls in Brass Conference in Calgary. The release has already been featured by Amazon Music Canada on their 2026 Artists to Watch list.
The Toronto-based artist, composer, professor and scholar, and music industry executive enjoys a busy career. She’s the Program Director of Professional Music at The Creative School of Toronto Metropolitan University, and an Assistant Professor at that institution.
At the SOCAN Foundation, she is part of directing national programs like the TD Creative Entrepreneur Incubator and Equity X Production Program, and serves on the boards of the Canada Council for the Arts and Music Canada. Charlie is a recipient of the King Charles III Coronation Medal, and was named Change Maker of the Year by Women in Music Canada.
She is also an Associate Composer at the Canadian Music Centre.
Wall-Andrews earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from York University, followed by an MBS from the Ivey Business School, and a PhD in Management from the Ted Rogers School of Management.
Her work is dedicated to addressing systemic challenges in the arts and culture sector in order to move towards a more inclusive industry, and empowering the next generation of artists.
LV talked to Dr. Wall-Andrews about her album, and a career that’s taken her from music to business and back again.
Charlie Wall-Andrews: The Interview
Where did such a dynamic career get its start?
“I started my whole journey as an artist. I went to school for music, this was definitely my calling,” Charlie says.
However, after graduation, she found herself ill equipped for an actual career as a musician. “You learn how to be creative, but you don’t learn how to sustain a career.”
She saw so many artists leading precariously professional lives, and rejected the popular stereotype of the starving artist. “I just didn’t want to play that game.”
As a result, she went back to school to study the business world, and find meaningful work. She eventually found ways of combining both her musical and business background in various ways.
Many music students, on graduating, find the transition to professional so difficult that they give up. “That was a fear of mine.” She’d spent so much time and passion studying and making music in varying ways, stepping into a completely different realm was jarring. “It feels overwhelming.”
In the end she was able to incorporate both fields in her work. Most of all, she wanted to help other artists develop and sustain their careers via entrepreneurship. “I’m thankful that I found a role in the music industry.” That’s true even when she was advocating for others, and not her own work. “I genuinely have found joy in helping others.”
She’s hoping, in other words, to be able to help other music grads so they don’t have to take such a long career break in order to build a viable career. Her business studies and much of her work looked into the precarity of the music industry as a whole, along with structural inequities.
“My research dug deeper and deeper into this.”
With her studies and settling into career mode, even though she was helping other musicians and artiss, she took a break from her own music and composition that lasted about a decade. Now, though, she’s ready to come back.
“It feels full circle,” Wall-Andrews says.
Back to Music: Women in Brass
“My heart is so full to get back,” she says. “I had so much capacity for getting back into this.”
She began working on LUNAR about a year ago, and the new album just the beginning.
“Lunar was the first of a bigger project,” she says. “There’s other works in the process.”
The work is dubbed a brass chorale. “I had anticipated that the world premiere would happen in the UK, where there [is a larger tradition of] brass bands,” she says. It was her agent that found a Canadian organization and suggested it for the premiere.
It’s only fitting that it should premiere at Girls in Brass, an event which took place earlier in January in Calgary, Alberta. The event is designed to inspire and encourage girls between the ages of 12 and 18 who study and/or play brass instruments in community or other ensembles, and offers career and musical skill development workshops, talks and much more. Along with professional musicians who offer masterclasses and other educational opportunities, the younger musicians are invited to bring their instruments and join in some of the performances.
“This worked out so wonderfully,” Wall-Andrews says. Considering the marked lack of representation for women who play brass instruments in most orchestras, it also tied into her other professional concerns.
“Adjusting gender issues in the industry and society at large is very important to me,” she says.
She looks to create partnerships to promote the interests of women and groups who are marginalized in the music industry, including a program to help women to become music producers who can be in control of their own creative output.
In Calgary, her music was performed by a professional quintet of musicians, and also with a larger ensemble that included high school students alongside the pros.
“It really filled my heart to be able to have the premiere happen with such a community aspect,” she says. “Especially being my first premiere in a really long time.”
The experience brought back memories of her own beginnings in music. “I was actually in a military youth program. I played the mellophone.” The mellophone is a brass instrument often used in brass bands to replace the French horn.
Holding the album launch in Canada was the icing on the cake. “We don’t really have a large brass band culture here in Canada.”
Music Then And Now
After such a long break, has her music changed?
“I was doing a lot of avant garde before,” she recalls. It’s the kind of esoteric music that, by and large, requires an audience educated in music and music theory to fully understand or appreciate. With so few people educated in the technical and theoretical aspects of contemporary music, particularly nowadays, it makes avant garde music unreachable for the majority.
“I came back with the intention of writing music that is contributing to the repertoire,” she says. She’s looking to compose music that is both modern and accessible, including to listeners who may not follow contemporary music per se.
“I think I’m coming back in this way. I feel that this phase, which is a second phase […] for me, it’s about creating that accessibility.”
Making music and presenting performances in Canada, in support of Canadian musical ecosystems, is also an aspect that she feels is becoming increasingly important. There will be more to come.
- Find LUNAR: Brass Chorale on various services [HERE].
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