Karl Jenkins

Karl Jenkins (Karl William Pamp Jenkins ) CBE, ( born February 17, 1944 in Penclawdd, Wales ) is a Welsh keyboardist, oboe, saxophone player and composer. Since 1975 he is married to the Welsh musician Carol Barratt, who also wrote the text for some of his works. Karl Jenkins is best known for his membership in the groups Soft Machine and Adiemus.

His time at Nucleus and Soft Machine

Jenkins took piano lessons by his father, who was a teacher, organist and choir director in place. As an oboist, he participated in the National Youth Orchestra of Wales. His professional music career began as principal oboist in the National Orchestra of Wales. During his studies at the Royal Academy of Music he studied with jazz and in 1970 a member of Ian Carr's Nucleus band. The formation was the jazz-rock strongly connected. For the band also included in the first years of drummer John Marshall and guitarist Chris Spedding. In addition to the bandleader Jenkins was the most important ideas here. His composition " Torrid Zone" already hinted at his later style. Typical are the continuous ostinato bass riffs, spread elongated melodic lines of spherical character of the wind and sometimes keyboards. Also indicative of Karl Jenkins are ballads topics with surprising harmonic twists like " Crude Blues Part 1 " on which Jenkins (as well as Keith Tippett Septober Energy) also shines on the oboe, which was very unusual at that time jazz-rock area.

In 1972 he moved to Soft Machine. Again he rose next gang leader Mike Ratledge on the most important composers and also replaced him after his band phase-out in 1976 on keyboards. Jenkins met again at John Marshall, with whom he largely led the group until their last LP project " The Land Of Cockayne ". Jenkins also was inspired by the minimal music experiments of the band for their own pieces. Ratledge and Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper had influences from Terry Riley, Steve Reich and other contemporary composers already dealt extensively with tape loops with repetitive sound sequences produced a trance atmosphere in such plays as " Outbloody Rageous ". Instead Tape Loops Jenkins coated several manually played electric piano on each other in such plays as " Soft Weed Factor," " Penny Hitch " and " The Floating World" to create meditative soundscapes. The Soft Machine LP "Seventh " and " Bundles " make a major composer Karl Jenkins handwriting. The same applies to the following albums " Softs " and " Alive And Well Recorded In Paris".

After 1980

In the 1980s and 1990s, he wrote mostly music for advertising (eg the famous Strings Suite " Palladio " - inspired by buildings of the Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio in Venice - for the diamonds advertising). With the ensemble Adiemus it was very successful. Here he led with wide -scale concert and choral arrangements along his musical experiences, ranging from pop to symphonic and sacred choral music to ethnic music. With Adiemus he was very successful both in the classical as well as in the pop field and earned his albums with multiple gold and platinum status.

He invented a meaningless language that is especially suited for vocals that should not distract from the content mood. At the time of the Kosovo war, he created his work " The Armed Man - A Mass for Peace ", which was premiered in April 2000 at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Based on a French song " L' homme armé " from the 15th century texts from different religions and epochs were set to music.

For his Requiem he attacked on numerous older Antiphonien ( as in paradisum ) and songs (such as the Dies irae ) back, which he edited and put into context with poems from Japan. The work was premiered on June 2, 2005 in Southwark Cathedral and quickly grew in popularity. In 2005 he created the soundtrack to the historic drama " River Queen " of the New Zealand director Vincent Ward. In 2007, he was instrumental in Mike Oldfield's new album Music of the Spheres, which was released in March 2008. Also in March 2008 appeared his work Stabat Mater.

On 12 June 2010 he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Works (selection)

• Adiemus (1994 )
• Palladio ( 1996)
• Eloise (Opera)
• Imagined Oceans (1998)
• The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace (composed 1999, first performed 2000)
• Dewi Sant, choir and orchestra (1999)
• Over the Stone (2002 ), Double Concerto for Harp
• Ave Verum (2004 ) for baritone
• In These Stones Horizons Sing ( 2004) for chorus and orchestra
• Requiem (2005)
• Stabat Mater (2008)
• Stella Natalis (2009)
• Gloria / Te Deum (2010)
• The Peacemakers (2012 )