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. He is Principal
Guest Conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra, 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 latest landmark series, The Birth of British
Music, airs on BBC2 on Saturday nights from May 9. He appears regularly
on Radio 3's Discovering Music, conducting the BBC Orchestras and his
own two bands 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'
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 4,000 people.
(For a biography of Charles Hazlewood click here)