Charles Hazlewood

Charles Matthew Egerton Hazlewood (born 14 November 1966) is a British conductor. After winning the European Broadcasting Union conducting competition in 1995 whilst still in his twenties,[1] 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.

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. [n 1]. He is also a founder of the British Paraorchestra, which performed together with the band Coldplay at the 2012 Summer Paralympics.[3] The "Army of Generals" supports many of his West Country projects. Appearances include St George's Bristol (partnering the Unthanks in a bespoke orchestral/folk project) in 2017[4] and at the Park Stage at the 2016 Glastonbury Festival (Philip Glass's Heroes Symphony), where they were also joined by members of the British Paraorchestra.[5]

Hazlewood has conducted over 100 world premieres.[6] He has also initiated several projects that explore common ground between different musical disciplines, such as "Urban Classic", (2006), which drew together together five grime emcees and the BBC Concert Orchestra.[7] His "Orchestra in a Field" festival took place at Glastonbury in 2012.[8] 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.[9]

Hazlewood has conducted many orchestras, including the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Copenhagen Philharmonic, and the Philharmonia Orchestra[1], 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.[10]

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 (Dimpho di Kopane, Sotho for "combined talents") 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.[11]

Hazlewood was music director of DDK from 2000 to 2007. With the company he also conceived the music for the shows Ibali Loo Tsotsi (The Beggar's Opera);[12] and The Snow Queen, which premiered in New York in 2004.[13]

In 2009, Hazlewood conducted Kurt Weill's musical drama Lost in the Stars, reset in apartheid South Africa, at the South Bank Centre.[14]

Television

Hazlewood created the 2009 BBC Two documentary series The Birth of British Music.[15] 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 (BBC2 2007)[16] and has anchored the BBC Proms TV coverage since 2001.[17]

He authored and presented How Pop Songs Work (BBC Four, 2008); a film with Damon Gough (aka Badly Drawn Boy) entitled Stripping Pop (BBC Three, 2003);[18] and a two part documentary Tones, Drones and Arpeggios: The Magic of Minimalism (BBC Four, 2018), on the history of minimalist music.[19]

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".[20]

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.[21]

Other activities

!n 2009 Hazlewood was a judge of the popular music industry's creativity awards, the Mercury Music prize.[22] In 2011 Hazlewood presented a TED talk, "Trusting the ensemble". [23]

References

Notes
  1. "Army of Generals" is a term coined in the 18th century by the musicologist Charles Burney to describe the Mannheim Orchestra, the finest orchestra of his day.[2]

Citations
  1. 10 questions for conductor Charles Hazlewood, Artsdesk website, accessed 24 May 2020
  2. Zaslaw, Neal (1976). "Toward the Revival of the Classical Orchestra". Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association. 103: 158. JSTOR 765891.
  3. "Coldplay join the paraorchestra of disabled musicians for closing ceremony", The Guardian 1 September 2012, accessed 24 May 2020
  4. St. George's website accessed 24 May 2020
  5. BBC Music website, "Philip Glass’ Heroes Symphony - Heroes (Glastonbury 2016)", accessed 24 May 2020.
  6. "Charles Hazlewood". BBC Radio 3. Archived from the original on 28 May 2009.
  7. "Mixing It". BBC Radio 3. November 2006. Retrieved 19 October 2011.
  8. "Orchestra in a Field". Archived from the original on 20 October 2012. Retrieved 12 December 2012.
  9. "Thunderbirds theme is go!", BBC Radio 4 website, retrieved 24 May 2020
  10. Hodgkinson, Will (8 May 2008). "The Somerset Barnstormer". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 13 November 2009.
  11. Spencer, Charles (28 February 2002). "Divine, defiant and dazzling". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 13 November 2009.
  12. Koenig, Rhoda (22 October 2002). "The Beggar's Opera, Wilton's Music Hall, London". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on 14 September 2016. Retrieved 13 November 2009.
  13. Jefferson, Margo (10 November 2004). "African and Western Worlds Collude Happily". The New York Times. Retrieved 12 December 2012.
  14. Seckerson, Edward (30 June 2009). "Lost in the stars". The Independent. London. Retrieved 18 November 2009.
  15. Warman, Mark (7 May 2009). "Interview: Charles Hazlewood". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 16 November 2009.
  16. "Classical Star Judges" (Press release). BBC Press Office. 27 September 2007. Retrieved 12 December 2012.
  17. "The Proms 2008" (Press release). BBC Press Office. 3 July 2008. Retrieved 12 December 2012.
  18. Dee, Jonny (5 January 2008). "Top of the Boffs". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 13 November 2009.
  19. "Tones, Drones and Arpeggios: The Magic of Minimalism - BBC Four". BBC. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  20. Mahoney, Elisabeth (4 May 2006). "Radio Review". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 18 November 2009.
  21. "Conductor Charles Hazlewood reveals childhood sex abuse", The Times 24 May 2020, accessed 29 May 2020.
  22. MacMahon, James (10 September 2009). "Who judges the Mercury prize?". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 13 November 2009.
  23. "Trusting the ensemble". TED. Retrieved 31 May 2020.
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