Charles MacInnes was born in 1966 in Perth. He grew up in Hamilton in Western Victoria where his parents were both teachers. While still at primary school he began clarinet lessons with visiting saxophonist Graeme Shilton, and switched to trombone at Hamilton High School (now Baimbridge College), where he learnt from trumpeter Roger Sullivan. Charles began bass trombone studies with Eric Klay at the Victorian College of the Arts in 1984, and was appointed to the position of Principal Bass Trombone with the Opera Australia Orchestra in Sydney in 1985. He moved to Hamburg in 1989 to study with Joachim Mittelacher at the Hamburg Hochschule für Musik und Theater, and held a Praktikant position with the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra. He returned to Australia in 2000, and was Head of Brass at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music from the end of 2009 until the end of 2011. He completed a Master of Composition there in 2014, followed by a PhD on improvisation in contemporary art music under the supervision of Thomas Reiner and Paul Williamson from Monash University. For the Music Trust he has recently written articles on the TV series Wakefield and acoustic ecologist R. Murray Schafer.