Charlemagne Palestine is a highly influential experimental American musician, composer, performer and visual artist. He creates intense, ritualistic music, which he refers to as "resonant music", in contrast to the "minimal music" of his peers, Phillip Glass, Michael Nyman, Terry Riley and Steve Reich. With his piano and organ works, he has developed a highly individual aesthetic centered around layered overtones, and electronic drones, which build and change gradually, gently harmonising. He also makes use of a technique called "strumming", where dense hypnotic rhythms are created by percussive repetition.

His performances are often shamanistic, and overtly spiritual in nature. Indeed music critic Brian March notes, "there's a transcendent timelessness about Charlemagne Palestine's music that makes me feel as if it will always be around."

Palestine has released over twenty solo records. He has performed internationally, and has collaborated with artists as diverse as Pan Sonic, Tony Conrad, David Coulter and Michael Gira.

Unique amongst his peers, Palestine is a trained carillonneur. He was a bell ringer at St Thomas Church in New York in the 1960s, and his early compositional work focused on the instrument. He says, "I lived near the bells, played them right next to my body. The sound became physical, visceral, each crack of the clapper was like a small earthquake". His past work with the Berlin Tiergarten Carillon is documented on the 2001 Staalplaat CD "Music for Big Ears".