Charles Matthew Egerton Hazlewood is a British conductor. After winning the European Broadcasting Union conducting competition in 1995 whilst still in his twenties, Hazlewood has had a career as an international conductor, music director of film and theatre, composer and a curator of music on British radio and television, and founder of Paraorchestra - the world's first integrated ensemble of disabled and non-disabled musicians.
Conductor
Hazlewood is music director of the music ensemble "Army of Generals", formed to record with him all the music he has written for BBC films.. He is also a founder of the British Paraorchestra, which performed together with the band Coldplay at the 2012 Summer Paralympics. The "Army of Generals" supports many of his West Country projects. Appearances include St George's Bristol in 2017 and at the Park Stage at the 2016 Glastonbury Festival, where they were also joined by members of the British Paraorchestra. Hazlewood has conducted over 100 world premieres. He has also initiated several projects that explore common ground between different musical disciplines, such as "Urban Classic",, which drew together together five grimeemcees and the BBC Concert Orchestra. His "Orchestra in a Field" festival took place at Glastonbury in 2012. In 2017, Hazlewood's "Thunderbirds are Go" project, featuring music by Barry Gray and involving members of the Paraorchestra and of the groups Goldfrapp and Portishead, was performed in Bristol. Hazlewood has conducted many orchestras, including the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Copenhagen Philharmonic, and the Philharmonia Orchestra, and also the Gothenburg, Malmö Symphonies, the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Many of his activities seek to increase the popularity of classical music among contemporary audiences by combining it with other styles of music.
Paraorchestra
Hazlewood is Artistic Director of Paraorchestra, the world's first fully integrated ensemble of professional musicians with and without disabilities, which he founded together with television director Claire Whalley in November 2011. The orchestra was the subject of a documentary by Channel Four The Great British Paraorchestra, screened in the hours between the end of the final sporting event at London 2012 Paralympics, and the Closing Ceremony where they made their world debut alongside Coldplay, Paraorchestra exists to recognise and showcase disabled musicians with extraordinary abilities, and to demonstrate their full integration into orchestral music. Just as the Paralympics have achieved in sport, Paraorchestra aims to shift perceptions of disability in creating a visible platform for gifted disabled musicians to perform and excel at the highest level, integrating talented players with disabilities into mainstream performances. In 2016 Paraorchestra performed the first ever classical headliner at Glastonbury Festival with Philip Glass’ Heroes Symphony. They returned to the same stage with their Love Unlimited Synth Orchestra in 2019, celebrating the genius of Barry White. The orchestra has toured to Russia, the Middle East, Greece and Australia, as well as playing throughout the UK.
Music director for film and theatre
In 1999, Hazlewood and theatre director Mark Dornford-May created a new opera company in Cape Town from the townships and villages of South Africa; the mostly black lyric-theatre company DDK was formed. Of the 40 members, only three had professional training. In January 2001, the company's debut of Bizet's Carmen opened to damning South African reviews, with one newspaper saying it was preposterous for black South Africans to perform Western opera. The Mysteries, for which Hazlewood devised the score, sold out in London's West End in 2003, inciting the first editorial on music in The Times newspaper in 40 years. Hazlewood was music director of DDK from 2000 to 2007. With the company he also conceived the music for the shows Ibali Loo Tsotsi ; and The Snow Queen, which premiered in New York in 2004. In 2009, Hazlewood conducted Kurt Weill's musical drama Lost in the Stars, reset in apartheid South Africa, at the South Bank Centre.
Television
Hazlewood created the 2009 BBC Two documentary series The Birth of British Music. He has authored and conducted the music in BBC films on Mozart, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky as well as a series exploring the birth of British music. He also appeared on the judging panel for the reality show Classical Star and has anchored the BBC Proms TV coverage since 2001. He authored and presented How Pop Songs Work ; a film with Damon Gough entitled Stripping Pop ; and a two part documentary Tones, Drones and Arpeggios: The Magic of Minimalism, on the history of minimalist music.
Radio
Hazlewood's radio show, The Charles Hazlewood Show on BBC Radio 2, won three Sony Radio Academy Awards in 2006. The musical selections are "linked together in surprising and productive new ways, with Mozart, for example, followed by Ivor Cutler, then The Streets, then Handel". On 24 May 2020 Hazlewood was the guest in the BBC Radio 4 series Desert Island Discs. During the programme he revealed that he had been a victim of sexual abuse throughout his childhood.
Other activities
!n 2009 Hazlewood was a judge of the popular music industry's creativity awards, the Mercury Music prize. In 2011 Hazlewood presented a TED talk, "Trusting the ensemble".
