Charles Hazlewood and the British Paraorchestra: Music of the Future
“Charles Hazelwood has worked with orchestras around the world and can count on the fingers of one hand the number of disabled musicians he’s encountered in any orchestra anywhere. His questions – Why is this? Where is their platform? Where is the infrastructure that creates a space for them so that they can collaborate with other great musicians?
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ABOUT Charles Hazlewood
“Charles Hazlewood is an award-winning conductor who works regularly with great orchestras around the globe. He made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2003 and his BBC Proms debut in 2006.
Central to his work is a huge passion to engage a wider audience with great music; to this end he appears regularly on BBCTV. It is his style as a communicator, described as engaging and enthusiastic that has made him a regular face on British television.
Charles works in a wide musical spectrum. He has conducted the cutting edge of contemporary music, pioneered the Urban Classic project (fusing Grime MCs with the BBC Concert Orchestra), and devised the music for many shows featuring his 40-strong South African opera company.
He launched ‘Charles Hazlewood’s All Star Collective’, an ensemble dedicated to improvisation at Glastonbury Festival 2008, touted by The Idler as, “A sort of avante-garde super group”. His flagship project is the music festival “Orchestra in a Field” (formerly “Play the Field”) held at his farm near Glastonbury and launched in 2009.
The 2009 programme included a version of Holst’s ‘The Planets’ where members of Hazlewood’s All Star band, featuring Will Gregory (Goldfrapp), Adrian Utley (Portishead), saxophonists Andy Sheppard and Jason Yarde, drummer Tony Orrell, keyboardist Graham Fitkin and harpist Ruth Wall improvised electronic responses to each orchestral planet from a separate stage across the parkland.
In 2010 with members of his All Star band and period instrument orchestra ‘Army of Generals’ they launched a project based on music from ‘The Beggar’s Opera’, first heard at The Roundhouse in London and modernising many of the satirical songs of the original ballad opera of 1728, written by John Gay.
He is currently working to establish the UK’s first ever National Orchestra for musicians with disability: The British Paraorchestra so that when this years Para Olympic Games begin between 29 Aug-9 Sept, he’ll throw down the gauntlet to the rest of the world asking, “Where is your Paraorchestra?”
The VIDEO
