Charles Hazlewood

Charles Hazlewood has won the European Broadcasting Union Conducting Competition in his 20’s. After that, he has enjoyed a global and pioneering career conducting some of the world’s greatest orchestras including the Gothenburg Symphony in Sweden, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam and the Philharmonia in London. Charles co-founded the award-winning South African lyric theatre company Dimpho di Kopane (London’s West End and worldwide), which was honored with Golden Bear for Best Film at the Berlin Film Festival for their movie U Carmen e-Khayelitsha.

He has launched a new breed of orchestral festival “Orchestival” in his home county of Somerset. In 2012 Hazlewood founded The British Paraorchestra, the world’s first large-scale professional ensemble of virtuoso musicians with disabilities. Hazlewood has authored, presented and conducted multiple television films on music for the BBC and Channel Four. He was awarded four Sony Awards for his shows on Radio 2 and 3.

Charles Hazzlewood took part in over 100 world premieres, worked with artists as diverse as Professor Green, Wyclef Jean, Nigel Kennedy and Steve Reich, and played the first ever symphony concert on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury Festival. In 2014 Charles’ re-invention of Gay’s Beggar’s Opera with his completely new score, ‘Dead Dog in a suitcase’ with the Kneehigh Theatre Company’, was named one of the top ten shows of the year by the Guardian newspaper and will tour the UK in 2015.

Conducting highlights of 2014 and 2015 include new initiatives with the Philharmonia in London and the regions; a tour of Holland with the Metropole Orchestra and Squarepusher; concerts with the Swedish Radio Symphony, Gothenburg Symphony and Copenhagen Philharmonic; his “Close Up” concert series with Malmo Symphony and NSO Dublin; and special projects with the British Paraorchestra and at the Glastonbury Festival and Sacrum Profanum Festival in Kraków, Poland.

Hazlewood currently resides in Somerset, where he lives with his family.