Charles Toet was born in 1951 in the Hague. He received his musical training at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague, where he studied modern trombone with Anne Bijlsma (senior) and where he began to specialize in early music and baroque trombone, which he now teaches at the same institution as well as at the Schola Cantorum Basliensis (Basel) and the Musikhochschule in Trossingen (Germany). He currently divides his energies between the seventeenth century (mostly with Concerto Palatino of which he is the co-founder) and the Classical and early Romantic repertoires, played on original instruments with such period orchestras as La Petite Bande (Sigiswald Kuijken), The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra (Ton Koopman), and the Orchestra des Champs-Elysées (Philippe Herreweghe).

He has performed and recorded extensively with Bruce Dickey and Concerto Palatino and with numerous other ensembles of particular importance to the history of early music, including, in addition to the ones mentioned above, Syntagma Musicum of Amsterdam, The Taverner Players of London, the Hilliard Ensemble, Hespérion XX, and the vocal ensemble Currende.