Karl William Jenkins OBE (born February
17, 1944) is
a British
musician and composer. Jenkins was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British
Empire in the New Year Honours list for 2005.
|
Contents
- 1 Background
- 2 Career
overview
- 3 Partial
list of works
- 3.1 Albums
- 3.2 Greatest
Hits collection
- 3.3 Other
works
- 4 External
links
|
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.
Partial list of works
Albums
Karl Jenkins's Requiem album cover.
- Adiemus: Songs of
Sanctuary
- Adiemus II: Cantata Mundi
- Adiemus III: Dances of
Time
- Adiemus IV: The Eternal
Knot
- Adiemus V: Vocalise
Greatest Hits collection
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
External links
| v • d • e Soft
Machine |
| Daevid Allen | Kevin
Ayers | Elton Dean | Hugh
Hopper | Mike Ratledge | Robert
Wyatt |
| Roy Babbington | John
Etheridge | Karl Jenkins
| John Marshall |
| Steve Cook | Marc
Charig | Lyn Dobson | Nick Evans | Jimmy
Hastings | Allan Holdsworth | Brian
Hopper | Ric Sanders | Alan
Skidmore | Rab Spall | Andy
Summers | Alan Wakeman |
| Discography |
| Regular albums: |
| The Soft Machine
(1968) | Volume Two (1969)
| Third (1970) |
Fourth
(1971) |
| Five
(1972) | Six
(1973) | Seven
(1973) | Bundles
(1975) | Softs
(1976) | Alive &
Well: Recorded in Paris (1978) | Land
of Cockayne (1981) |
| Related articles |
| Canterbury sound - Jazz
fusion - Wilde Flowers |
