Karl William Jenkins OBE (born February 17, 1944) is a Welsh musician and composer. Jenkins was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the New Year Honours list for 2005.
Karl Jenkins | |
|---|---|
| Website | Karl Jenkins official website |
Background
Jenkins was born and raised in the Gower village of Penclawdd. His father who was a local schoolteacher, organist, and choirmaster, gave him his initial musical instruction.
Jenkins began his diverse musical career as an oboist in the National Youth Orchestra of Wales. He went on to study music at University College, Cardiff, and at the Royal Academy of Music.
Career overview
For the bulk of his early career, he was known as a jazz and jazz-rock musician, playing variously: baritone and soprano saxophones, keyboards and oboe (an unusual instrument in the jazz context). He joined jazz composer Graham Collier's group and later co-founded groundbreaking jazz-rock group Nucleus, which won first prize at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1970. Later he joined the Canterbury progressive rock band Soft Machine in 1972 and co-led them their very last performances in 1984. The group defied categorisation and played venues as diverse as the Proms, Carnegie Hall, and the Newport Jazz Festival. The album on which Jenkins first played with Soft Machine, Six, won first place in the Melody Maker British Jazz Album of the Year award in 1973, in which Jenkins also won first place in the miscellaneous musical instrument section (as he did the following year). Soft Machine was voted best small group in the Melody Maker jazz poll of 1974. After Mike Ratledge left the band in 1978 Soft Machine did not include any of its founding members, but kept recording on a project basis with line-ups revolving around Jenkins and drummer John Marshall.
Jenkins has created a good deal of advertising music, twice winning the industry prize in that field. Perhaps his most-heard piece of music is the classical theme used by De Beers diamond merchants for their famous television advertising campaign focusing on jewellery worn by people who are otherwise seen only in silhouette. He later included it as the title track in a compilation of various works called Diamond Music, and eventually created Palladio, using it as the theme of the first movement.
As a composer, his breakthrough came with the innovative crossover project Adiemus. Jenkins has conducted the Adiemus project in Japan, Germany, Spain, Finland, the Netherlands, and Belgium, as well as London's Royal Albert Hall and Battersea Power Station. The Adiemus: Songs of Sanctuary (1995) album sold well enough where it topped the classical album charts. It spawned a series of successors, each revolving around a central theme.
He is also the first international composer and conductor to conduct The University of Johannesburg Kingsway Choir lead by the phenomenal Renette Bouwer, during his visit to South Africa as the choir performed his The Armed Man: A mass for peace together with a 70 piece orchestra.
Partial list of works
Albums
- Adiemus: Songs of Sanctuary
- Adiemus II: Cantata Mundi
- Adiemus III: Dances of Time
- Adiemus IV: The Eternal Knot
- Adiemus V: Vocalise
Greatest Hits collection
- The Best of Adiemus
Other works
- Adiemus: Live — live versions of Adiemus music
- Eloise (opera)
- Imagined Oceans (1998)
- The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace (2001)
- Dewi Sant (2000)
- Diamond Music (1996)
- Merry Christmas to the World (1995) — a collection of traditional Christmas music orchestrated by Jenkins
- Over the Stone (2002) — a double harp concerto
- Crossing the Stone (2003) — an album featuring Welsh harpist Catrin Finch and material from the double harp concerto
- Ave Verum (2004) — for baritone (composed for Bryn Terfel)
- In These Stones Horizons Sing (2004)
- Requiem (2005)
- Quirk (2005) concertante
- River Queen (2005) — score for the film River Queen directed by New Zealand director Vincent Ward
- Tlep (2006)
- Kiri Sings Karl (2006) — with Kiri Te Kanawa
- This Land of Ours (2007) — with Cory Band and Cantorion