Charles Shere (August 20, 1935, Berkeley, California - December 15, 2020, Healdsburg, California) was an American composer. He studied composition briefly with Robert Erickson and Luciano Berio but was largely self-taught. His music was primarily in unconventional notations and open form through the 1970s and early 1980s, but turned to more conventional forms (though not expression) thereafter. He was Music Director of radio KPFA in Berkeley in the late 1960s, a producer at KQED-TV in San Francisco from 1967 to 1971, and music critic of the Oakland (California) Tribune from 1971 to his retirement in 1988, and taught music history (and occasionally composition) at Mills College (Oakland, California) from 1971 to 1986.