Charlie Chan

Charlie Chan composes on her primary instrument – a 97-key Bosendorfer Imperial Grand 290 piano, and records in her HD 3 studio, combining state-of-the-art technology with collectable vintage microphones and recording equipment.

The child of a Chinese-Malay father and Scottish-Australian mother, Chan was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia and grew up in the Dandenong area, 30 km from the city's centre. She received a ukulele at age three which she took to immediately – a gift from her father's employer, GM Holden, given to Charlie at the annual company Christmas party. Chan's parents rewarded her musical interest with a Skylark acoustic guitar and music lessons when she turned five, and she soon began playing her uncle's pianola and the piano shortly thereafter. Chan also taught herself drums and started her first band at eight years of age with friends at her local Catholic girls' school.

At this time, influences included those from her parent's record collection – musicals such as My Fair Lady, Oklahoma! and The Sound of Music, along with pop and jazz influences like Chicago, Simon & Garfunkel, The Carpenters, flugelhorn player Chuck Mangione and the Getz/Gilberto collaboration that featured their famous rendition of "The Girl from Ipanema".

Chan auditioned for and was accepted by three highly regarded music-focused schools at age 15 – the Victorian College of the Arts, Blackburn High School and University High School – opting to attend the latter. By 15, Chan had furthered her orchestration experience by composing and/or arranging music for small ensembles of up to 15 musicians at school, along with drama and music camps. One of Chan's early major orchestration assignments at drama camp was for a stage adaption of the novel They Shoot Horses Don't They?. Originally named Maryann Chan at birth, she was "christened" Charlie Chan around this time by friends at a drama camp. The name stuck.

Chan has sold more than 75,000 physical CDs, and more than 500,000 individual track downloads to fans via her web site – many of whom reside in the United States.

Working first with Yamaha as a new product demonstrator put Chan in front of much new music technology. She became proficient on the Yamaha DX7 – the first commercially successful digital synthesizer. She also took to the Minimoog – a monophonic analog synthesizer released in the early 1970s. This led to further experimentation with keyboards, sequencing software and electronic sampling – something Chan embraced at a very young age, and has continued to incorporate into her ongoing work with original albums as well as for stage and screen scores.

As a composer for feature films, TV series, documentaries, dance and theatre productions, Chan has myriad screen and stage musical credits. These include soundtracks for Killing Time (anticipated 2011 Australian drama series starring David Wenham), Me Myself I (film) (starring Rachel Griffiths), high rating Australian television staples McLeod's Daughters and Australian Story, acclaimed Sydney Theatre Company play "Gift of the Gorgon" and numerous free-to-air, National Geographic and Discovery Channel documentaries including Addiction, The Last Warriors, Persons of Interest and many more.

Since the early 2000s, Chan has been regularly commissioned to compose soundtracks for feature films, television series, documentaries and stage productions. Highlights include soundtracks for feature film Me Myself I, long-running television drama McLeod's Daughters, and the 2011 Australian television crime-drama series Killing Time starring David Wenham.

In the early to mid 2000s, Chan expanded her own label, Martian Music, into a successful independent online music service for herself and other artists in Australia and around the world. Its Internet based sales and distribution mechanism pioneered digital downloads and music ecommerce in Australia. Chan has since moved on into the field of application development, partnering with several technology firms to develop new music distribution models.

These experiences culminated with the release of Chan's solo recordings and, in 1996 after the band's management was sent a Charlie Chan recording, an Australian and Asia Pacific tour supporting world music electronica band Deep Forest.

Having studied piano, guitar, double bass, orchestration and computer-based music technology in her childhood, Chan's public career began in the 1990s with a series of original jazz, classical, improvisation and world-music inspired albums on the Sony Masterworks classical label. At this time, she gained a reputation for blending acoustic and electronic music, while pioneering an Australian artist's use of multimedia technologies and the internet.

Charlie's live concert appearances include the State Theatre Sydney and Melbourne Town Hall. She performed at the Sydney Opera House in the mid-1990s for the first online live broadcast of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras annual event launch.

In the 1990s, Chan released three critically celebrated solo albums on her own label in partnership with the Sony Masterworks classical label and Sony Music Publishing. These were called The Adventures of Charlie Chan (1993), East and West (1996) and Wild Swans (1998). Each of Chan's recordings suggested an adventurous spirit, creating an unusual compositional blend of classical piano and minimalist figures, ambient soundscapes, globally inspired tribal folk music, jazz trio improvisation, and world-pop styled music.

Charlie Chan (born 2 January 1966) is an Australian pianist/composer best known for her original, mostly instrumental music albums and for creating numerous soundtracks for the stage and screen.