Charles Hazlewood is Music Director and co-founder with Mark Dornford-May of the award-winning 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. As a composer he conceived the music for THE MYSTERIES and IBALI LOO TSOTSI-THE BEGGAR'S OPERA both of which have had hugely successful runs on four different continents, and a new operatic stage version of THE SNOW QUEEN which was premiered in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York 2004.

The company's first feature film U CARMEN E-KHAYELITSHA, for which Charles Hazlewood was music director and conductor, won the Golden Bear for best film at the Berlin Film Festival in 2005. It has since been released globally, and opens across the UK in April 2006.

DDK have just finished their second feature, THE SON OF MAN, which will be released around the world in the next twelve months.

With Mark Dornford-May, in 1999 Charles re-opened WILTON'S MUSIC HALL as a lyric theatre venue to the public for the first time in over 100 years. They enjoyed four highly successful years there, with productions of work such as CARMEN, Kurt Weill's THE SILVERLAKE and Britten's THE TURN OF THE SCREW receiving enormous acclaim.

“Charles Hazlewood in sharp and cultured form – I cannot recommend highly enough that you see this…
a kind of electric shock therapy.”

– The Times

“ From now on, this is the Carmen by which all others should be measured.”

– The Observer

“Some of the most blazingly original theatre in Britain.”

– Daily Telegraph

“The Mysteries…a modern miracle.”

– Evening Standard

“Musically, the show is stunning. Charles Hazlewood’s arrangements of evocative English folk tunes makes Wiltons (Music Hall) positively resound with glorious sound.”

– Daily Telegraph

“Charles Hazlewood conducting with his usual muscular panache.”

– Sunday Times