<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Telephone Interview 7th<\/sup>\nJanuary 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Charles Hazlewood is\nan international conductor and musical revolutionary. He has conducted\nsome of the greatest classical repertoire with some of the best orchestras in the\nworld and is a significant presence on British television and radio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He is the founder of\nthe world\u2019s first Paraorchestra<\/a> and his critically acclaimed\nmusic theatre shows tour the world; his innovations have created new audiences\nfor orchestral music and even reset what our concept of an \u2018orchestra\u2019\nis. Hazlewood is a visionary with a mission to bring the ever modern joy\nof orchestral music to the 21st century audience and in doing so, to change\nlives and communities for the better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Charles Hazlewood won\nfirst prize in the European Broadcasting Union Conducting Competition during\nhis early twenties, and has since conducted many of the world’s greatest\norchestras (including The Royal Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, The Philharmonia,\nLondon Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Symphony, Gothenburg\nSymphony, Danish Radio Symphony). He has played Carnegie Hall, the BBC Proms,\nand multiple festivals throughout the world, collaborating with artists as\ndiverse as Nigel Kennedy, Professor Green and Wyclef Jean. Charles has\nconducted over 200 world premieres and won the Berlin Film Festival ‘Golden\nBear’ for Best Film with his South African township opera company’s U Carmen\ne-Khayelitsha<\/em>; <\/p>\n\n\n\n Under his leadership The British Paraorchestra<\/a> became the world’s first large-scale professional ensemble of virtuoso musicians with disabilities who made their debut at the Closing Ceremony of the London 2012 Paralympics and were the first ever orchestral headliner at Glastonbury Festival. Charles has authored, presented and conducted the music in multiple films for BBC TV (on Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, amongst others, as well as The Beatles, and Badly Drawn Boy, and Minimalism); he has won three Sony Awards for his shows on BBC Radio 2, created the score for the South African Mysteries<\/em> (West End and worldwide) and Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs), <\/em>and a new opera The Tin Drum<\/em> (both Knee-high) and has three TED talks to his name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, I\u2019ve been really\nlooking forward to this! I think the work you\u2019re doing with the Paraorchestra is\nincredible. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Aaah!<\/p>\n\n\n\n It has been going since\n2011 hasn\u2019t it? That was your first meeting with the original members.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah. I suppose the idea started to percolate\nfor me from around 2010- 2011. My daughter\u2019s got cerebral palsy, so she sort of\nfast-tracked me\u2026 I started to think very\ndifferently about why I didn\u2019t meet any disabled people in the orchestras I\nwork with around the world. It\u2019s so bizarre, the world is missing out on so\nmuch talent that just isn\u2019t necessarily shaped in quite the same way. The\nnature of the orchestra is that it usually contains people who conform to very\nspecific stereotypes, particularly in terms of the instruments they play. An\nawful lot of the disabled musicians that I\u2019ve met don\u2019t make music using a\nconventional instrument – they\u2019re using some form of assisted technology. Of\ncourse, orchestras currently haven\u2019t got space for assisted technology –\nthey\u2019ve only got space for people who play very traditional instruments that\nhave always been part of the make-up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In\n2010-2011 – at that point in our culture in the UK – the Paralympics was coming\nto London. This movement (which was a British initiative) was over fifty years\nold but had finally come to a point where people were genuinely taking it\nseriously for the first time. It was like a watershed moment. The Paralympics\nis now no longer this kind of fuzzy, \u2018feel-good\u2019 event: \u2018ah bless them, let\u2019s\nget the poor disabled athletes out the house, give them a chance to do\nsomething\u2019. For the first time I\nthink people were thinking, \u2018holy shit – this is world-class sport!\u2019 I\nwas looking at all of this thinking \u2018well, music is much more universal than\nsport so what on earth are we doing? We\u2019re missing out. All of this talent, and\nwe\u2019re not making a platform for it, we\u2019re not integrating it\u2019. So I just went with\nthis once in a lifetime opportunity. The eyes of the world were on us with the\n2012 games so I thought that something had to be done – we\u2019ll form a new group.\nThat\u2019s how it was born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\nthink the world at large is not aware of the fact that there are genuinely no\nbarriers to anybody making music, with any kind of impairment whatsoever. For\nthe first time in the history of humankind that there is genuinely a\npossibility for anyone and everyone on the planet to make music. That\u2019s a\nreally brilliant place to be. I think the world at large hasn\u2019t really woken up\nto it, they\u2019re not really aware of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s fantastic. Has\nyour daughter been involved and come and seen your rehearsals? I imagine she\nhas.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah\n\u2013 she\u2019s a firm supporter of what we\u2019re doing! (laughs) She\u2019s still so little.\nShe watches from the wings and she\u2019s very delighted by what she sees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So who are the core\nmembers now? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\nsuppose you could say the orchestra is \u2018pan-disabled\u2019. There is every kind of\ndisability. There\u2019s hearing loss, visual impairment, paralysis, autism,\naspergers, cerebral palsy\u2026 Clarence was one of the leading trumpeters in the UK\nbefore he had a terrible post-gig motor accident. He now plays a piece of\ntechnology called \u2018Headspace\u2019 where he blows down a tube and it activates a\nwhole bunch of stuff. It\u2019s an incredibly sophisticated programme on his\ncomputer so he can play pretty much anything now. It\u2019s amazing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s\nLynn Levett, a composer with cerebral palsy, a clarinettist with hearing impairment\u2026\nbut it\u2019s constantly shifting. Actually, we\u2019re about to take on a whole load of\nnew talent in the next couple of months. It shifts and morphs all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You sometimes use able-bodied\nmusicians as well, don\u2019t you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh\nGod yeah. When I formed the group the one negative that came back at us (and it\u2019s\nquite understandable) was \u2018what are you doing? You\u2019re just creating another\ndisabled ghetto, why do want to do that? The whole point is that we want\nintegration\u2019. My response was \u2018of course, integration is our goal but first we\u2019ve\ngot to shine a big bright light on the issue as it stands, and more to the\npoint, help people to change their prejudices\u2019. We have to remember that it\u2019s still\nvery hard for most people – liberally minded intelligent people – to put the\nwords \u2018disability\u2019 and \u2018excellence\u2019 in the same sentence. They find that hard\nto do. So when I initially put forward the idea for this Paraochestra, there\nwas the assumption that we were just talking about it as a lovely fluffy,\nfeel-good, fuzzy project. <\/p>\n\n\n\n My\npoint was that it\u2019s not that, it\u2019s about creating world-class music. Until we\nshine a bright light on that first and say that it is possible to be disabled\nand to be world-class we can\u2019t reach Stage Two. That\u2019s the much more important,\nlong-lasting stage: that there\u2019s no reason why disabled musicians can\u2019t be on a\nplatform on a stage with able-bodied ones, and it still will be world-class\nmusic. That\u2019s the goal for all of us here. It\u2019s about creating an integrated\nworld where it\u2019s no longer surprising to be sitting down at the Barbican to watch\na world-class gig, and a healthy number of people on the stage happen to be\ndisabled. No biggy \u2013 right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Right! How does it work\nwith notation? You\u2019ve mentioned the assisted technology, but what about the instrumentalists?\nIs it mainly conventional notation? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We\njust embrace whatever system or approach is most useful. There\u2019s a lot of\nexperimentation and a lot of music is learnt by ear. Music can be programmed in\n– there is a multitude of different ways that people can take their part on board.\nA lot of the music we make is born out of improvisation in any case. I\u2019ll\nsuggest some melodic\/harmonic\/rhythmic contours (or fundamental bits of DNA, if\nyou like) and then the orchestra goes off into groups of two or three people\nand they devise episodes based around that material. Then they come back and\nthere’s a kind of \u2018show and tell\u2019. Other members of the orchestra reflect back\nand say what\u2019s worked and what hasn\u2019t, what they got, what they didn\u2019t get etc.\nThen the orchestra splits off into lots of different groups again, and there\u2019s\nmore of the same process. You see what I mean? So there\u2019s a gradual whittling\ndown to a musical narrative that everyone believes in and everyone\u2019s had a joint\nhand in the creation of. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That sounds so exciting.\nAnd it also leads me into my next question \u2013 how do you think it has altered\nyour role and furthered you as a conductor?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh,\nI think it\u2019s just completely reinvented the wheel for me. You have to remember\nthat there\u2019s an assumption with disability and non-disability: that disabled\npeople will do everything they can to join the able-bodied world. Now to a\nlarge extent that\u2019s true, because the majority of the world is able-bodied. But\nin assuming that one-way street or direction of travel, you miss out on\nsomething very fundamental. The example I always give is when you sit down and\nimprovise with other musicians (and these can be the most experienced and long\nin the tooth musicians you can imagine). I\u2019ve done it round the world ever\nsince I started making music. Ironically, you actually get the same upshot –\nthere is a terrible, itchy, pregnant silence. No one wants to be the first to\ncommit, to throw their hat in the ring; they\u2019re always waiting for someone else\nto do it. Basically people are fearful – they don\u2019t want to look foolish. They\nwait for someone else to expose themselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That\nawful pregnant silence or gulf lasts for ages until, as if by magic, everyone\nsuddenly jumps in and it\u2019s a terrible mess. It\u2019s takes ages for everybody to\nstart to relax and to trust themselves and those round them. Now, with the\nfirst four musicians of the Paraorchestra, that whole process took around five\nminutes. I think if you\u2019re confined to a wheelchair, you can\u2019t hear properly, or\nyour sight doesn\u2019t function the way another person\u2019s might, you just don\u2019t\nsweat the small stuff. You don\u2019t have the same petty self-consciousness that\u2019s\njust about your ego. So in that one small way that\u2019s a fantastically powerful example\nof how it\u2019s a two-way street. We all have to learn from them \u2013 they are super,\nhyper evolved in a way that we aren\u2019t. It\u2019s quite thrilling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So\nby extension to your question, of course it\u2019s stretched me. It\u2019s changed my\noutlook, particularly in terms of this very collective chipping away, working\naway, gradually whittling down of the music to some kind of core narrative that\neveryone believes in. It\u2019s fantastic for me because so much of what conductors\ndo is based on an old (and let\u2019s face it) funky, outmoded model: the model that\nis a kind of pyramid structure, where the conductor stands at the top and\ndictates how everything should be. Well, any conductor who has any kind of\nenlightenment understands that actually it\u2019s not about that at all, it\u2019s about\ncreating an environment within which magic can occur. It\u2019s certainly not about\ndictating or coercing the musicians to work in one particular way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\ncould play a Beethoven symphony in London on a Tuesday and then in Stockholm on\nthe Saturday \u2013 two orchestras, but it\u2019s still the same me, and the same\nrelationship with that Beethoven symphony. But between those two performances I\u2019ll\nhave two completely different experiences of that piece (if I\u2019m doing my job\nproperly). My job is about creating a framework which is strong and yet freeing\nand secure, one within which an orchestra of musicians can completely fly and\nshine. That is the point. In a way the Paraorchestra has been a key part of my\nlearning in that respect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019re not always\nstanding in front of the orchestra are you? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n No,\noften they don\u2019t need it, it depends on the setting or situation or context. I\u2019m\nthere when they need me and I\u2019m not when they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019ve done a lot of amazing\ncollaborative work \u2013 for example with Coldplay during the Paralympics. How did\nthat collaboration work?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It\nwas a gradual, nice, low temperature collaboration with Coldplay for the\nParalympics. We had time to work out what it was we were going to do and how we\nwere going to do it. There was time. It was a beautiful process when Chris Martin\ncame round and he met all of our musicians and hung out with them. We took the\ntime that was necessary to be organic and beautiful rather than just stuck\ntogether in a rush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So it\u2019s not like a soloist\nbeing flown in for one rehearsal, like you would get with a concerto\nperformance.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n No,\nvery different. Of course it can work, a soloist comes in and there\u2019s one\nrehearsal and then a bunch of gigs. But for something as unusual and as far\nleft as this, the only way it\u2019s going to have meaning and resonance is if you\ntake the time and you really take care with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The<\/em><\/strong> Nature of Why<\/em> was\na collaboration with dancers, wasn\u2019t it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Absolutely.\nAn ongoing provocation of mine is how do you effectively remove, or erase, the\nfourth wall. We conventionalists in live musical culture do it by sitting in a\nseat in a long shoebox shaped room with an orchestra at the far end, listening\nto a beautiful and homogenised, perfect sound. This sound \u2013 a kind of\ncollective, perfectly balanced sound -emerges and washes over us. That\u2019s great.\nBut when I was six or seven years old I was taken to watch an orchestra\nrehearse. It was literally the first time I had encountered an orchestra. I was\nsitting there on my own in a vast empty auditorium watching this rehearsal. The\nconductor turned round, peered at me and said \u2018why don\u2019t you come up and sit in\nthe middle of the orchestra?\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n So,\nI rather shyly walked up the stairs onto the stage, sat down and they continued\nthe rehearsal. I\u2019ll never forget the extreme, extraordinary, blissful tsunami-like\nexperience of all of this melodic and harmonic information fired at me from all\ndirections, and how engulfing and how overwhelming that was. It made such an\nimpression on me that ever since I\u2019ve been looking at ways to recreate that\nexperience for audiences. I think about\nhow we might create something where the audiences are genuinely engulfed and\nutterly consumed by the experience. The\nNature of Why <\/em>was a very determined attempt to recreate that experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What an important moment\nfor you – then you became a conductor!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah\nthat\u2019s right. Conducting was just trying to recreate that experience, that \u2018eureka\u2019\nmoment, for each and every person. Orchestras are incredible things. Let\u2019s just\nremember that an orchestra is the most evolved form of teamwork that exists in\nmankind. People complain how football teams don\u2019t work well in teams – there\u2019s\nonly eleven of them. An orchestra can be upwards of a hundred people working\nwith intense, extreme, insane synchronicity, and at the same time there is\nimmense freedom for each and every one of them to express themselves\nindividually. There is genuinely not another example of that in any form of\nhuman experience. It\u2019s a remarkable thing. Yet at the same time most people\nonly have a relationship with the orchestra by virtue of either movies or video\ngames. My view is that if you get anyone like that to a room with a real, live red-blooded\norchestra, their life will shift on its axis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I saw that you performed\nTerry Riley\u2019s In C<\/em> at one point. In\nterms of the established repertoire, what works well?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Well\nIn C<\/em> can work – it\u2019s an incredibly\ncompliant creation in the sense that it can work with a choir of forty, a\nstring quartet, a mix and match ensemble of twenty-five players etc. It\u2019s\ncompletely open to whatever you want to make of it. The rules are very simple\nand provided you remain faithful to those you\u2019ll get an amazing experience from\nit. It can be rendered by any number of different disparate models or\nsituations, so it\u2019s not like I had to remake the piece. I\u2019ve done it in lots of\ndifferent environments: the Ulster Orchestra, a group of singers in Cape Town, with\nan electric guitar orchestra in Poland\u2026 I\u2019ve done it in many, many different\nways and it always brings a kind of fascinating, interesting yield. It\u2019s\nbeautifully open. It\u2019s an incredible act of love, or an invitation as a piece\nof music in a way that few pieces of music are, actually. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What about music pre-1900?\nI know that you did Greensleeves<\/em>, but\nhow can it work with more conventional repertoire?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh,\nI think the sky\u2019s the limit. For me, all roads lead back to Mozart. Mozart is\nmore important to me than any other composer that\u2019s ever existed. I\u2019ve spent a\nlot of my time performing Mozart and that informs and grounds me in terms of\neverything else I\u2019m doing. For instance, there\u2019s a chord sequence called La Folia<\/em> which has been used (last time\nI checked) by over three hundred and fifty listed composers as a basis for\ncomposition. That\u2019s a good example of something that can be very open ended.\nYou can take a Bach fugue, or some slices of Harry Partch or Conlon Nancarrow.\nYou can look at what is going on in Russian polyphony in the Seventeenth Century\nor polyphony in the Nineteenth Century. There are so many starting points, an\ninfinite number actually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s fascinating. Obviously\nthe Paraorchestra has commissioned new pieces. Do you collaborate with disabled\ncomposers?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes\nabsolutely. The composer the Paraorchestra has probably commissioned more than\nany other is Lloyd Coleman. He\u2019s an unbelievably talented broadcaster, composer\nand clarinettist. We\u2019ve worked with him extensively since the conception of the\ngroup. He\u2019s one of the founding members and he\u2019s just astonishing – words can\u2019t\nreally describe how much of a virtuoso he is. So we continue to work with him\nextensively, but there are many others besides. It\u2019s about getting balance – creating\nthe right narrative that\u2019s needed at that moment in time. It might be by using\na disabled composer; it might not. But of course at the same time you find\nyourself wondering, where\u2019s the grey area? We\u2019re all kind of disabled, aren\u2019t\nwe?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes! <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n So\nwhere\u2019s the line? Of course, many, many musicians would not wish to identify as\ndisabled, even though they do have disabilities in technical terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes exactly. I actually prefer\nthe term \u2018differently-abled\u2019, because that\u2019s exactly what it is. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\nagree, I agree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I remember seeing an\ninterview with Evelyn Glennie \u2013 she said being deaf was way down on the list of\nadjectives describing who she was. And that\u2019s how it should be for everybody.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It\nis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What about disabled (or \u2018differently-abled\u2019)\nconductors – have you had anyone assisting you? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n No,\nI haven\u2019t spent any time with differently-abled conductors as yet but you know,\nit\u2019s only time!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes, I wonder how that\nrole could be adapted as well.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n