Charles Hazlewood

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Charles M. E. Hazlewood is a British conductor and broadcaster on music.

After school at Christ's Hospital, Hazlewood gained an organ scholarship to Keble College, Oxford University in 1986, although, during his time there, he proved to be better at acting than conducting.

He was nominated by the BBC in 1995 as the UK's sole representative in the European Broadcasting Union conducting competition in Lisbon, where he won first prize, launching his conducting career. He conducted at Carnegie Hall for the first time in 2003.

Conductor of a variety of orchestras, Hazlewood made his BBC Proms conducting debut in the Royal Albert Hall in London in August 2006. He is joint Artistic Director and co-founder of the South African theatre company Dimpho Di Kopane.

Hazlewood has made a number of documentaries on composers for the BBC, including The genius of Mozart (2004, three parts), the The genius of Beethoven (2005, three parts), and Discovering Tchaikovsky (2007, two parts). He also has a weekly radio show on BBC Radio 2 'Charles Hazlewood' and BBC Radio 3 'Discovering Music'.