Director of Music Ministries
Dr. Charles Staples has been Director of Music Ministries at Trinity since 1991 and has led its choirs
and ensembles in worship and in concerts for nearly 3 decades. Aside from its yearly services of
Lessons and Carols, the choir has performed numerous major choral works and has even participated in
a concert in Carnegie Hall under John Rutter.
With his doctorate in piano performance, his playing has been described in the Richmond Times-Dispatch as “forceful…but unforced, as natural as breathing.” A native of Alabama and honors graduate of the Alabama School of Fine Arts, Staples won the Van Cliburn full tuition scholarship to the Cincinnati College-Conservatory and completed his graduate work at Stony Brook University, training under David Bar-Illan, Martin Canin and Bernard Greenhouse. Aside from solo and chamber performances too numerous to count, Staples has been soloist in concertos with the Richmond Symphony as well as the CCM Concert Orchestra, the Congress of Strings, the North Carolina Symphony and University of Richmond Orchestra. He recently made his 6th appearance with the Richmond Philharmonic playing the Rachmaninoff 2nd concerto. He has also performed recitals in New York’s Town Hall, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and in live broadcasts and concerts on WGUC (Cincinnati), WQXR (NYC) and VPM in Richmond.
He teaches on the piano faculties of VCU and the Greenspring International Academy of Music. [He] “proved yesterday to be fully up to the technical and expressive demands of the Rachmaninoff concerto … the pianist lifted more than 300 listeners out of their seats in a cheering ovation after a performance that was both bravura and lyrically sensitized.”