An introduction from Charles Hazlewood
“At Orchestra in a Field I want to prove that you can have exactly the same kind of visceral experience at an orchestral concert that you might at a rock festival. Music is the most universal language we humans have, and there are few things to beat a world-class symphony orchestra playing like their lives depended on it. ”
“The fact that it happens in a field rather than in the more rarefied atmosphere of a concert hall means that anyone and everyone can be how they want and respond how they want. Every person on the planet has the ability to understand great music. Orchestra in a Field is determined to prove it. I’ll introduce the whole show live from the stage, to help people who know the music well hear new things in it and to encourage people who aren’t so familiar with classical music to engage with their heads as well as their hearts.”
A profile of Charles Hazlewood
‘Acid hot’ – the Observer
Internationally renowned conductor, Charles Hazlewood launched his first classical music festival, ‘Play the Field’, in 2009 to unanimous critical acclaim. The event, which he hosted at his farm in Somerset, was an extension of his main mission: to engage a wider audience with great music.
Hazlewood has won a unique place in British music through the eclectic range of his work. In the past six years he has conducted over 50 orchestral world premieres. He made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2003 and his BBC Proms debut in 2006. He is known to millions for his many landmark BBC films on Mozart, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky amongst others.
From 2000 to 2007 he was Music Director of Dimpho di Kopane in Cape Town for whom he devised the music for The Mysteries, The Beggar’s Opera, The Snow Queen (West End and worldwide) and was conductor of their feature film U Carmen e-Khayelitsha.
Charles Hazlewood’s All Star Collective launched at Glastonbury Festival in 2008, featuring Will Gregory (Goldfrapp) and Adrian Utley (Portishead), the year after Hazlewood had conducted the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain in the first-ever symphony concert at Glastonbury, on none other than the Pyramid Stage.
He guest-conducts major orchestras around the world, this season performing in Sydney, Malaysia, New York, and throughout Scandinavia; in 2012/13 he launches a new opera company in Johannesburg, he has two major films on BBC4 this Winter and periodically hosts his own Sony Award-winning show on Radio 2. Charles lives in Somerset and is very much part of the local scene as well as the national and international creative arts and music worlds.
“What Heston Blumenthal is to food, Charles Hazlewood is to music” – The Guardian
“An evangelist for every age and tradition of music” – The London Evening Standard.
