A North Carolina native, Charli Mills studied voice with Glenn Siebert of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and with Susan Durham Lozaw at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, where she received a B.A. in Christian Studies and Music and a Master of Church Music.
As an undergraduate at Southeastern, she received the Gerald C. Cowen Outstanding College Student Award and was the winner of the Southeastern Baccalaureate Colloquium for her senior research paper on Martin Luther’s view of cosmic harmony. As a graduate student, she received the Ben. S. Johnson Church Music Award and the Raymond Bryan Brown Memorial Scholars Award, Southeastern’s most prestigious scholarship, as well as the Charles B. Keesee and Daniel R. Hoover scholarships, among others. During her final semester at Southeastern, she served as the assistant conductor for the Southeastern Orchestra. In 2019 she studied at the Seraphic Fire Professional Choral Institute at the Aspen Music Festival and School and in 2021 she was a young artist with Classic Lyric Arts Italy.
Charli has served as music minister/worship leader at churches in North Carolina and California. She has been an adjunct instructor at Methodist University in Fayetteville, NC where she taught private voice and directed the women’s chorus; at Southeastern Seminary, where she developed and taught online courses in music; and at National University, where she taught world music to military-affiliated students. As a performer, she has particularly enjoyed singing with the Magnolia Baroque and Salem Bach Festivals in Winston-Salem, NC. In October 2020, she made her opera debut as Sadie in the Piedmont Opera's production of Carlisle Floyd's Slow Dusk, where she was praised for her “effervescent tone and imaginative phrasing” (Voix de Arts) and "beautiful dynamic nuance" (CVNC).
Charli is currently the Director of Traditional Worship Arts at Mt. Tabor United Methodist Church in Winston-Salem, NC, and performs as a freelance vocalist specializing in sacred music.