| Variations of Name | Charles Matthew Egerton Hazlewood |
| Biography | Charles Hazlewood is a British conductor and advocate for a wider audience for orchestral music. After winning the European Broadcasting Union conducting competition 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.
Hazlewood has conducted many of the world's best orchestras, including the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg & Malmö Symphonies, Copenhagen Philharmonic, the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw of Amsterdam and the Philharmonia.
Hazelwood is best known for his relentless crusade to bring orchestral music to a 21st-century audience. His many innovations, such as introducing the music to the audience, recasting of the term 'classical music' to 'orchestral music', taking orchestral performance out of the concert hall to fresh audiences, and rethinking what an orchestra by integrating disability and new technologies, and his collaborations with leading musicians from all genres of music have been instrumental in creating new 'norms' in the world of orchestral music.
The British Paraorchestra (BPO) is the world's first professional ensemble of disabled musicians, founded by Hazlewood and television director Claire Whalley in November 2011. Following their world debut at the Paralympic Closing Ceremony in 2012 alongside Coldplay, the BPO is pioneering a global movement to recognise and showcase disabled musicians with extraordinary abilities. |