Charl de Wet grew up in South Africa and studied piano with Barbara van Wyk. He later also studied with Adolph Hallis, Sofia Moshevich and Pauline Nossel. He also studied cello from a young age with Ilse-Mari van Wyk and chamber music with Alan Solomon. As a cellist, he was a member of the Betty Pack Youth Orchestra, the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s Junior orchestra and the SA National Youth Orchestra. He appeared as soloist with many South African orchestras. In 1982 he won 4th prize at the International Piano competition in Montevideo Uruguay followed by the University of South Africa’s Music Scholarship Prize for the best performance in their final music examination. He has played in masterclasses for Fou Ts’ong, Oxana Jablonskaya and Leon Fleisher.

In 1984 he was accepted as a student of Leon Fleisher at the Peabody Conservatory of music. In 1985 he returned to South Africa to study medicine at the University of Pretoria and in 1992 started residency training in Anesthesiology at the University of the Witwatersrand. That same year he and Erika Botha (now Le Roux) were semi-finalists in the ARD international competition for duo pianists in Munich Germany.

In 1994 he started residency training in the Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care at the University of Chicago followed by fellowships in critical care at Stanford and pediatric cardiac anesthesiology at UCSF. He is currently Professor of Anesthesiology and Surgery at Washington University in St Louis and was the medical director of the cardiothoracic ICU from 2005 till 2025.

Since 2009 he has completed several half-marathons and 17 marathons including San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Berlin: he qualified for and completed the Boston marathon twice and has run the Paris marathon six times.

In 2022 after an absence of almost 30 years he bought a piano and started playing piano again. The following year he was one of six finalists in the “Concours International des Grands Amateurs de Piano” in Paris, France. In 2024 he won second prize in the Boston International competition for Amateur pianists and was awarded the prize for best interpretation of a classical composer. In September 2024 he was a finalist with honorable mention at the International Chopin Competition for Amateur pianists in Warsaw Poland and later that month was the Grand Prize winner in Cremona Italy of the international amateur piano competition - Pianolink 2024. As part of the first prize he was invited back in 2025 to play in the winner’s recital and play with the Pianolink Orchestra during the annual MiAmOr festival in Milan Italy. He currently studies with Alla Voskoboinykova from the University of Missouri, St Louis.