Conductor Charles Hazlewood has earned a formidable reputation for his boundless energy and commitment.

Following his studies at Christ's Hospital and Oxford University, Hazlewood won first prize at the European Broadcasting Union conducting competition in Lisbon in 1995. He has recently been appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra, and guest conducts many leading orchestras in the UK and abroad. In June 2003, he made his Carnegie Hall debut conducting the Orchestra of St. Luke's.

As Music Director of Excellent Device, the orchestra formed in 1991, Hazlewood has blazed a trail in new ways of approaching music. He also has a sister orchestra Harmonieband which comprises the cream of period instrumentalists in London.

He is also Music Director and co-founder of the lyric-theatre company Dimpho Di Kopane, [DDK], (Sotho for "combined talents"), based in Cape Town. For the company he has conducted Carmen and West Side Story and as composer conceived the music for Yiimimangaliso (The Mysteries) and Ibali Loo Tsotsi (The Beggar's Opera), both of which have had hugely successful runs in London and on tour worldwide, and The Snow Queen, which premiered in New York in 2004.

DDK's first feature film, U Carmen e-Khayelitsha, (for which Hazlewood acted as music director and conductor) premiered in South Africa in spring 2005, prior to international release, and was awarded the prestigious "Golden Bear" award for Best Film at the 2005 Berlin Film Festival. It opens across the UK in April 2006.

As part of his passion to reach the widest possible audience for music, Hazlewood is well known to television audiences as "The face of classical music" (Daily Telegraph) for the BBC, for whom he has authored and conducted the music in several groundbreaking films: Vivaldi Unmasked (BBC1), The Genius of Mozart (BBC2/4), Beethoven (BBC2/4). He is currently making films about Tchaikovsky (for transmission in early 2007), and an unprecedented landmark series on the history of British music.

He has a highly-acclaimed weekly show on BBC Radio 3, Charles Hazlewood Discovering Music where he deconstructs great orchestral music with the BBC orchestras and his own two bands. He also appears regularly on the double Sony Award winning "Charles Hazlewood Show" on BBC Radio 2, demonstrating his vast and catholic music tastes, in sessions recorded on his west country farm. Hazlewood won both the 2005 and 2006 Sony Award for his radio work.

Hazlewood's determination to explore music of all varieties with the widest possible audience has lead him to work with some of the most celebrated contemporary composers; in the past six years he has conducted over fifty world premieres, worked with the rawest new South African vocal talent, and explored artists at the cutting edge of the popular music scene in the UK, in projects such as the recent Urban Classics: fusing 5 Grime MC's with the BBC Concert Orchestra at the Hackney Empire.

Charles Hazlewood lives with his family on their farm in Somerset.

Charles made his conducting debut a the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall in August 2006.