Charles Compo

His father recorded and performed with jazz artists like Zoot Sims, Duke Jordon and Lionel Hampton and his mother was part of the original cast of Plain and Fancy on Broadway.

His grandfather, Joseph Daltry, founded the music department at Wesleyan University and his grandmother, Faith Merriman, was a soprano with the San Francisco Opera under the direction of Gaetano Merola.

In 1991, he appeared in a number of shows in and around New York City under the stage name Chuck Tempo, including Axel Rhodes in the Off Broadway production of Return to the Forbidden Planet.

Compo studied composition and arranging with Don Sebesky and has performed and recorded with jazz artists Curtis Fowlkes, Sahib Shihab, and Roy Campbell Jr., William Hooker, and Ted Daniel.

The selected work “Down At The Rally” had also been awarded a special prize by MOMA curator Paulina Pabocha, at the WAH Center’s juried exhibition “America The Beautiful: The Real and Imagined”.