I N T R O D U C T I
O N
Charles Hazlewood is an award-winning conductor who works regularly
with great orchestras around the globe. He made his Carnegie Hall debut
in 2003 and his BBC Proms debut in 2006. This season sees his debut
with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, the Gothenburg
Symphony in Sweden and the Philharmonia in London. He is Music Director
of the contemporary ensemble Excellent Device! and its period instrument
sister-orchestra, Army of
Generals.
Central to his work is a huge passion to engage a wider audience
with great music; to this end he appears regularly on BBCTV. He has
authored and conducted the music in films on Mozart, Beethoven,
and Tchaikovsky and his recent landmark series, The Birth of British
Music. He appears regularly on Radio 3's Discovering Music, conducting
the BBC Orchestras through deep-tissue exploration of great orchestral
music. He also hosts The Charles Hazlewood Show on Radio 2 which has
won him 3 Sony Awards.
Hazlewood works in an amazingly wide musical spectrum. He has conducted
over 50 orchestral world premieres from the cutting edge of contemporary
music, pioneered the Urban Classic project (fusing Grime MCs with the
BBC Concert Orchestra), and devised the music for many shows featuring
his 40-strong South African opera company; The Times dubbed their West
End run of 'The Mysteries', 'Some of the most blazingly original theatre
in Britain'. He launched the 'Charles Hazlewood All Stars' - an ensemble
dedicated to improvisation - at Glastonbury Festival 2008.
In August '09 Charles unveiled his latest venture, a new breed of orchestral
festival on his farm in Somerset called Play
the Field. It was broadcast on Radio 2 and attended by over 4,000
people. Play the Field
will return in 2011.
2010 sees Hazlewood back in South Africa to launch a new opera company
in Johannesburg.
(For a biography of Charles Hazlewood click here)