Karl Jenkins: The Composer behind the Moustache (2024)

[bunniefuu]

He has a gift to deliver

an emotional message

to a mainstream audience,

and that's a rare

quality in classical music.

MUSIC: The Eternal Knot

by Karl Jenkins

Even if his name is not known

to every concertgoer in Germany,

his music certainly is.

MUSIC: The Eternal Knot

by Karl Jenkins

The minute you hear Karl's

music anywhere, you know it's Karl.

That's it.

Karl's music

is just so approachable,

he writes catchy, lyrical melodies,

and they end up going round

and round in your head all day.

Karl has just celebrated

one billion total streams.

It's an astonishing number.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

The Armed Man has been

an enormous phenomenon.

It's certainly the most performed

piece of music

by a living composer.

MUSIC: The Eternal Knot

by Karl Jenkins

He has the skill to putting

together classical field

and pop-rock field.

I was very honoured

to have my music performed

at King Charles's coronation.

And, of course, there was another

story that did the rounds

on social media that I was taken

for being Meghan Markle in disguise!

Although born in Wales, I spent

my early years in Sweden.

It is very special to return

there for the first time

in a very long time.

My grandmother on my mother's side

was a c*ck picker,

and every weekend she used to go to

the bigger towns to sell c*ck -

Cardiff and Newport.

And it was in Newport she met

my grandfather,

Carl Gustavus Edward Pamp,

who was an engineer

on a Swedish merchant vessel.

Looked quite alien, too!

He didn't look Welsh,

put it like that!

He had a moustache and he looked

kind of European, I suppose.

He used to wear a bowtie

and a waistcoat.

My mother was ill,

her health was getting worse.

So we came over here, the air

was perceived to be a lot better.

The first time I lived here for

six months with my grandfather's

three sisters -

Faster Hilda, Lily and Mia.

I remember the apartment

at Brunnsgatan, 49.

I remember the staircase.

It used to turn like that.

And my aunt's shop, Kappmagasin,

which was a ladies clothes shop.

Oh, that's on the photograph,

isn't it? Yeah.

As a child I was more conversing

in Swedish with my mother.

At that time I learned as much

Swedish as English.

Very little Welsh, because

the family didn't speak Welsh

for one of those reasons -

I was part of that generation

where it was neither encouraged,

nor was it spoken at home.

And my friends didn't, so I didn't,

which I regret to a certain extent

nowadays. And similarly Swedish,

it was an opportunity there for me

to learn if I carried on with it.

But my mother died

when I was five.

Um, she developed tuberculosis.

And then about three or four years

later, my grandfather died

so that kind of Swedish

connection was severed.

A very quiet boy.

But one thing I do remember,

whenever we went out to play

rounders,

we always wanted to be in Karl's

team because he was a left hander.

And of course, there'd be nobody

fielding on that side.

It was a very happy childhood,

despite the fact my mother

died when I was five.

But I was surrounded

by lots of aunts and...

Too many, actually!

..aunts and neighbours that I called

auntie when they weren't.

You know! I think half the village

was Auntie someone or other.

ORGAN PLAYS

Chapel was three times

every Sunday.

Sunday school in the vestry

here in the morning,

and chapel in the evening.

The sound and the congregational

singing, it's almost tribal,

the congregational hymn singing

that one gets in Wales,

in four parts then, usually.

And those kind of untrained voices,

but with a lot of raw emotion in it.

And I found it incredibly moving.

My father was the greatest

inspiration in my life, really.

He had a huge support

from his sister Evelyn,

who brought me up from the woman's

side, and my grandmother.

Most of all, he loved the oboe,

and it was his influence

that encouraged me to play the oboe.

He did quite a lot of innovative

things for the village.

They did Faure Requiem,

and he transcribed the whole work

into tonic sol-fa, which

the choristers read, and also

the text, the Latin text he wrote

in phonetics, English phonetics,

you know, so because people

had a fear of Latin text, I think.

# Pie Jesu

# Pie Jesu

# Pie Jesu, Domine

# Dona eis

# Requiem

# Sempiternam... #

He never remarried.

It was never discussed.

I asked him sometimes,

late in life, and he...

You know, he's a strong Christian.

He had beliefs that he'd see

my mother again in some

kind of afterlife.

# Sempiternam

# Requiem... #

My huge regret is that he and my

Aunt Ev never saw what I did later.

And when I returned to using

the classical core of the music

I write nowadays, he departed

this world knowing of me as a kind

of jazz musician, if you like.

CHOIR: # Pie Jesu

# Pie Jesu

# Pie Jesu, Domine

# Dona eis

# Requiem

# Sempiternam

# Sempiternam...

# Sempiternam

# Sempiternam

# Requiem. #

I used to play in the dance band

with my father and we played

in the church hall.

I can remember when the

band took a break,

Karl took the stage and he was

showing us what his jazz skills

were like, and he must

have been about 15 at the time,

and he was really good.

JAZZY BASSLINE PLAYS

When I went to university,

I started the music course.

It was very academic, as I expected.

SCATTING

Life in Cardiff was great

and I played jazz in downtime.

There was a club in Bute Street

which was a kind of, in some ways,

a no-go area. It was Cardiff Docks -

a rough, multi-racial

red light district.

So we used to go down there once

a week, sometimes play, whilst

still having to do my course.

# A boogie, a boogie

# A boogie, a boogie

A boogie... #

There were raised eyebrows,

I suppose,

about a person doing BMus

getting tied up with jazz,

but he did enough of the

sort of classical things

to keep the university

authorities happy,

and he was very good at doing

his exercises, his Palestrina

and his Bach harmony

and this sort of thing.

And then he'd sort of drift off,

and he had this other, other life,

you know, his alter ego

with the jazz.

# Boo-boo, boo-boo, boo-boo... #

What was kind of pivotal

between my last year in Cardiff

and my first at the Academy, there

was a jazz course held at Barry

and many guests came down

from London, and one was a fellow

called Graham Collier,

who was a jazz composer.

And he said, "When you come

to London, give me a ring."

And I did.

So when I went to the Academy

at the same time, I joined his band.

MUSIC: Deep Dark Blue Centre

by Graham Collier

In the late 1960s,

it was an incredibly inventive

and busy time

in the world of British jazz.

Ian Carr formed Nucleus

and Karl joined,

and it must have been quite

a surprise for Ian Carr

to have a guy arriving with an oboe

under his elbow.

And that was quite a first.

UPBEAT JAZZ PLAYS

He was quite intriguing.

He was very thin because he

chain smoked all the time then,

and he was very quiet.

We were sitting on the top of a bus,

because he didn't have a car

or anything like that.

And he said, did I like jazz rock?

And I said, "What's that?"

So he took me along

to a Nucleus concert.

Karl stayed with Nucleus

for about three or four years,

and then he and the drummer,

John Marshall,

both decided to join Soft Machine.

And they transformed the band.

Because his compositions alone

changed the nature of the band.

Being jazz musicians, you want to

get the improvisation and the flow

and the creativity, and combine

that with the kind of directness

of a lot of rock music.

And one of the things about

Karl was that

he came up with these amazing riffs,

like serpentine riffs,

but they gave you a jumping off

point for the improvisation.

And over that,

he'd just float the thing.

Listening to this, I thought,

wow, there's something serious

at play here.

Because not only there was

a virtuosity,

so you had some very, very fine

technical musicians,

musicians who really knew their way

around the instruments,

they also had an incredible,

erm, creativity

that was based on risk, they were

prepared to push the envelope.

But within the structure of it,

musically, there was a classical

sensibility at play, and that's

what really caught me here.

Commercially, it perhaps

didn't have the legs,

but it certainly attracted

the avant-garde.

When he joined Soft Machine,

that was the band where the drummer,

Robert Wyatt,

took all his clothes off,

and there was none of that

going on when Karl joined.

We did the east coast of America,

we did Italy,

we did Germany quite often.

France was very popular.

Not that it ever was popular

in the sense of Pink Floyd,

where it kind of...

The kind of genesis of both bands

were around the same time,

but they went on to a certain level

of public acclaim,

and Soft Machine didn't.

Four, five guys on the road

together, you know.

Took to the quote, "good life"

pretty well!

I mean, he...

He got a Lotus pretty soon.

What happened, of course,

was the two oil crises,

it became uneconomic, kind of,

almost overnight.

So gradually the band

sort of wound down.

At that point,

I was still working in jazz.

I don't think I ever realised

my ambitions

because I never found myself in my

natural skin as a musician-composer,

call it what you will.

And then I met up with

Mike Ratledge again,

and he was kind of

at a loose end as well.

Neither of us wanted to tour.

He had a girlfriend who was a model.

So through this connection,

we did this Boots No7 commercial.

He was into computer programs

to drive synthesisers

that people couldn't buy.

There was a saxophone

triple tracked.

We won the Best Music Award

at the D&AD Awards,

which was the premiere industry

award for advertising.

WOMAN SPEAKS RUSSIAN OVER TANNOY

I had seen a piece of work

they had done for a

Boots commercial,

which I thought was

particularly outstanding.

So we commissioned them to compose

this music for a commercial

that was about somebody smuggling

jeans into Russia.

The brief is very simple.

One is to capture the kind of drama

and the totalitarian state

that existed in the Soviet Union,

and the oppressiveness of it.

And then when he does get through,

when he gets to his own flat

and he opens the bag,

there's a sense of relief

as he reveals what he was actually

smuggling were jeans.

SAXOPHONE MUSIC PLAYS

Musically, the scope was enormous.

It could be symphony orchestra

or a jazz group or a rock trio

or whatever.

# Ooh, I bet you're wondering

how I knew... #

Another kind of thing

that was in vogue then

was what they called sound-alikes.

It was when agencies wanted to use

a famous track but they couldn't

secure the rights to use

the actual recording.

# You know I loved you more... #

Nick Kamen took his clothes off to

the strains of Marvin Gaye's

I Heard It Through the Grapevine.

# When I found my... #

Tony Jackson was a Barbadian singer,

and he did Marvin Gaye.

# I heard it through

the grapevine... #

And recreated it in a studio,

and it was hugely successful.

We did quite a few commercials

that had some kind of resonance.

There was one with the boy

diving for pearls.

That was Cheltenham & Gloucester.

And we did a few of those Nicole

and Papa ones for Renault cars.

# Ee, ee, ee-ee

# Ooh, ooh, ooh

# Ariadiamus... #

With Adiamus,

the brief was very vague.

They wanted something global.

# Ariadiamus la-te aria... #

That was built on soft folk voices,

and then the hard, tribal African

type of singing,

which is loud singing

with no vibrato,

which gives it that

kind of child-like quality.

# Ana mana coo le rawe

# Ana mana coo le ra

# Ana mana coo lerawe akala

# Ana mana coo le... #

The text of Adiemus, the girls had

to sing something,

so I didn't fancy Latin, because the

idea that the sound was otherworldly

or global or whatever, not Latin,

which would have been European.

And with the time constraints

of getting it done I thought,

well, why not use the voice

as an instrument

and make up words like

scat singers do in jazz?

Anyway, it doesn't matter

what they sing.

The appeal is in the music

and the sound of it.

Everyone else is saying, "Oh, my

gosh, that's really clever."

But it's not so much clever,

it's just an intuitive sound

that goes with that particular tune.

# Ana mana coo le rawe

# Ana mana coo le ra

# Ana mana coo lerawe akala... #

I first came across the music of

Karl Jenkins

when I sold his music

as part of a mail order company.

And it was the best seller not only

in the world of classical,

but generally in the world

of pop as well.

# Aya coo ah-eh

# Aya coo ah-eh

Aya coo ah-eh

# Ariadiamus la-te ariadiamus da

# Ari a natus la-te adua

# Ara vare tu-e vate

# Ara vare tu-e vate

# Ara vare tu-e vate la te-a... #

With Adiemus, which was kind of

pivotal and important

for many reasons, really...

It was a hit single in Germany

and all kinds of places,

and it was also very popular

in Japan.

But funnily enough, Delta didn't fly

to Japan at that time,

so it got through in Japan just on

the strength of the music.

# Mawe kayamana, mawe kayama

# Mawe kayamana, kayama... #

When I wrote and recorded Adiemus,

I had no idea it would be popular,

but that happens quite often

with me!

Occasionally, I think I have written

something a bit...

..that might be popular -

it never is.

# Mawe kamaya

# Mawe kamaya

# Mawe kamayamama mantea... #

He was a fully formed composer

when he came to us.

Adiemus: Songs of Sanctuary was

already a very popular piece

of music, but his music wasn't being

performed by other people.

It started to be performed

all over the world by an enormous

variety of all sorts of different

choirs of different abilities,

and it instantly became

very popular with school choirs.

# Ah-ke-ah

# Ah-ke-ah

# Ah-ke-ah, ah-ke-maya

# Ah-ke-ah

# Ah-ke-ah

# Ah-ke-ah, ah-ke-maya... #

Advertising was responsible

for Adiemus,

and I think it was time of the

third album that The Armed Man

came to me as a commission. It

wasn't planned from my perspective.

It's not something I would

have remotely thought of writing

if the commission

hadn't come my way.

The radio station brilliantly

had been involved in supporting

the commissioning, with the

Armoury at Leeds, of a work

that would celebrate the Armoury

at the turn of the millennium.

We decided between us that what we

should do, because we were a museum

and museums are about collections,

that we should create new things

for the collection.

Karl had written a

certain type of music.

So could he write the other sorts of

music you needed in The Armed Man?

Karl responded absolutely

brilliantly.

# L'homme, l'homme, l'homme arme

# L'homme arme

# L'homme arme doit doute

# Doit douter... #

One of the things we said was

the mass is the right form

because we're dealing

with the commemoration

of a Christian timespan.

But the story we're telling, which

is the story of how we go to w*r,

why we go to w*r, and the horrible

consequences of w*r,

and hoping at the end for a better

way to solve our differences,

that's something which covers

all of mankind.

So we wanted to bring in

different religions,

different parts of the world

and so forth.

And Karl responded

brilliantly to that.

The themes that he uses, world peace

and all religions together,

that is a theme that is very

much appealing to people.

I've heard it called

a mass for a secular age.

And I think to some extent

that is true,

in that choirs that very often

perform sacred works

are very drawn to it,

because it fits into that mould.

# Kyrie Eleison

# Elei

# Eleison. #

# Sanctus

# Sanctus... #

We were living in a house

in Hampton Hill.

# Dominus... #

Karl was writing music

in a chalet really in the garden.

Used to disappear with his pyjamas

and his boots on.

# Sabaoth... #

I was looking at the words, I said,

"Gosh, how are you going to portray

"w*r in music?" You know?

But he did.

# The thundering drum

# Thundering drum

# The thundering drum

# The double double beat

of the thundering drum

# The thundering drum

# The thundering drum cries,

"Hark!"... #

We had to have something

at the centre of the work,

which was about battle itself,

which brings in all the things

about military music, the drums

and the trumpets and so forth.

And then the horror of battle.

# Charge! Charge!

# Charge!

# Charge!

# Charge!

# Charge! Charge!

# Charge!

# Charge! Charge

# Charge!

# Charge!

# Charge! #

CHOIR SCREAMS

We put the concert on at the Albert

Hall and we were recording it live.

It was a sense of, goodness me,

what's it going to be like?

Because again, with any new piece

of music, you don't know until,

not, it's not just the first

performance, you don't know until

the third, fifth, sixth, seventh

performance, really.

# Agnus Dei... #

It was a hair on the back

of the neck moment

because the audience immediately

engaged with it.

It was quite extraordinary.

Immediately engaged with it.

# Agnus Dei.. #

It was amazing. And the audience

reaction was brilliant.

But then nothing,

nothing happened at all.

It died...

..until the CD came out.

And of course, the CD came out

the day before 9/11.

And it's a terrible thing to say,

but the 9/11, I think,

made The Armed Man in many ways

the success it was

because the music was so right for

everyone's feelings at that time.

SIRENS WAIL

This is an opportunity

to actually do the work

with the composer himself.

So would you please give

a warm welcome to Karl.

APPLAUSE

Thank you.

For many years, I have actually

conducted many of Karl's works,

and I have performed The Armed Man

twice, in fact,

in the United States, as well

as performed in China.

And when it came to 9/11,

I thought it would be very exciting

to have Karl actually conduct

for the tenth anniversary of 9/11

in Avery Fisher Hall.

There really was no choice.

That seemed to be the obvious

repertoire

that needed to be programmed.

w*r is futile,

violence is futile,

We need to take those barriers down

and Karl's music, it just stops

people in their tracks.

It was the most extraordinary

feeling that day. To be able to sing

Karl's piece, which, of course,

is tailor made

for an occasion like that,

in that setting at that time, is an

experience that I will never forget.

# For you, my dearest friend

# Who should be with me now

# Not cold

# Too soon

# And in your grave

# Alone. #

The Armed Man has

been an enormous phenomenon.

It's performed by all sorts

of orchestras and choirs,

whether that's professional,

top professionals,

or whether that is right

down to the school choir

or the local amateur chorus.

It's had two performances a week

all over the world

since it was written,

which is a phenomenon

that we've never seen

the like of before.

CHATTER

We've sold half a million

vocal scores,

which, believe me, is a big number,

and the CD has been

incredibly successful.

Good. Thank you. Done?

Yeah. OK, good.

And we just recently celebrated

1,000 weeks

in the UK Classical Chart

for The Armed Man.

Can I congratulate you? Thank you.

Thank you so much from the bottom

of my heart for all your work.

Thank you.

This popularity

has really ricocheted

through all of the choral works

that Karl's written.

I was always a musician.

Read music at Cardiff University

and then the Royal Academy,

but I fell in love with jazz as well

in my teenage years.

I had no master plan.

So then I thought of the great texts

that all the great composers

from the past set,

but with a difference.

Whatever the work was,

I borrowed from other cultures.

Cultural misappropriation

or whatever doesn't come into it,

I've never been accused of it.

And I looked at it the other way,

you know, as should someone

like Eric Clapton not play the blues

because he's white?

Or should, should black people

not play the saxophone

because it was invented

by a Caucasian Belgian?

You know, it works both ways.

I had all these tools, using

percussion as impetus

rather than a colour,

as in a lot of classical music,

using it as a rhythmic pulse,

really, like jazz does and rock.

# Dies Irae

# Dies illa... #

I wouldn't have arrived

at where I am, I don't think,

without writing in advertising and

these other disciplines,

because I learnt a huge amount,

particularly about instrumentation

from different countries,

a lot from jazz,

but all these different elements,

you know, are part of what I am.

We're a commercial company,

so we have to believe

that what we're going to do

is going to sell.

I think Karl Jenkins is probably

the only living composer

that we would work with regularly.

The fan base does seem to be

extremely loyal.

We have to work hard to sell

any concert nowadays,

but the applause at the end

of each show says it all.

We did the birthday concert

at the Albert Hall,

and I would say there must have been

300 to 400 people who came back

for an autograph afterwards.

I haven't seen a queue like that

for a very, very long time.

One of the most important

works I was asked to write

was commemorating

the Aberfan disaster,

when a coal tip moved on a mountain

and enveloped a school.

It's a work for a particular

occasion, but it has a universal

message and appeal as well.

# Pitran, patran

Titrwm, Tatrwm

# Dagrau agos, dagrau glaw

# Pitran, patran... #

It's a mining disaster that

primarily involved the death

of children, and it is the most

harrowing work I'd ever written

because it was personal in a way.

Aberfan is, what, 40 or 50 miles

as the crow flies,

from where I was born.

# Anthony John Sullivan

# John Islwyn Jones

# Richard Philip... #

All of a sudden, the choir starts

naming all the children

lost in the tragedy.

And I thought that particularly...

..moving.

In a musical sense,

incredibly clever.

Typical Karl Jenkins,

bringing through his immense

knowledge of music.

# Jacqueline Powell

# Dennis Arscott

# Sandra Donovan

# Benedictus

# Benedictus

# Qui venit

# In nomine

# Domini

# Buried alive by the

National Coal Board

# Bwrw glaw man

ac mae'r dagrau yn disgyn... #

One bit stands out for me is when

Bryn Terfel sings this phrase,

which is true because it

was read out in court,

"Buried alive by the

National Coal Board."

# Buried alive by the

National Coal Board

# Buried, buried, buried

# Buried

# Buried, buried

# Buried, buried

# Buried. #

The section in the score

for what we call the bereaved,

who were relations of those

that had perished.

# Dominus... #

One lady came up to me

and just said, "Spot-on."

We were very supportive

and took solace from it.

# Dominus... #

Just brought it to me that the work

was a fitting commemoration

to the memory of Aberfan.

I think it's one of

my best ever pieces,

because the nature of the piece

is very specific to an occasion

and a place at a certain time.

So in that sense, the piece of music

doesn't travel that well.

Although the message,

we try to make the message

as a universal one for children.

# Dei. #

I was asked to write a children's

opera for W11 Opera.

It's been a hit on the continent

more so than the UK.

# Spit and polish

Spit and polish... #

Eloise turned out to be incredibly

popular on the continent of Europe.

# Get a move on... #

And it just happened to be at the

time that German opera houses

decided they were going to start

putting operas for family audiences

on the main stage

of these big houses.

# To mark this day a gift for you

# I give you each

a silver spoon... #

It's one hour long with

a small ensemble.

Carol did all the words,

I did all the music.

We found this text

about magic spoons.

It's about kings and princesses,

Volheks,

that were kind of like witches.

# Lo

# Here I am... #

# Time to honour your promise

# Do you remember... #

It's kind of charming.

The tunes are good, I think.

# Forgive me

# Forgive me

# Forgive me... #

CAST SING

# Spoon. #

In 2019, Karl wrote a saxophone

concerto for Jess Gillam,

who is an incredible

British saxophone virtuoso.

I actually start this

piece offstage,

which is actually quite

nerve-racking for me

because I can't see the conductor,

so I think it's given

a theatrical element.

It's all to do with movement

in a way.

The first movement is Perambulation,

which is going for a walk.

And various things happening

along the route.

It had its first performance

in Berlin in Germany.

It was a joyous occasion

when that finally took place.

It's got wonderful jazzy riffs

and licks that she plays

at incredible speed.

In discussions, I found out that

she'd learned to play the saxophone

in a carnival.

Apparently, she tried

the stilts first

and she wasn't very good at that.

So then she took up the saxophone.

The second movement is more fantasy

where there's a hum at the note D,

and then she floats over the

top like a fantasy thing.

You get the sense of air

in the second movement,

and you really get the vocal sense,

I suppose, because Karl has written

so much vocal music, it's almost

like he's written for a voice

with the saxophone.

And then the third one

was Wonky Wheels.

The rhythm is five-eight,

so it's like a bit like

a supermarket trolley, you know,

it never goes

where you want it to go.

So it's like lopsided, you know?

Lots of movement, bicycle bells,

and a general affection.

It makes it sound like a joke

piece, but it is quasi humorous.

MUSICIANS CLAP TO THE BEAThe last movement is a samba,

like a Brazilian carnival thing.

The piece is really good fun.

It's a lot of sarcasm and wit

and humour in it,

but also it makes the most of the

mellifluous sound of the saxophone.

APPLAUSE

Like most composers,

his life was deeply impacted

by Covid.

Some composers found it

actually quite helpful,

allowing them to focus

without distractions.

But Karl, I think, found it

extremely challenging.

# Sakura... #

A life of isolation

is common for a composer.

There's no different -

lockdown or no lockdown.

The piece that came out of it

is One World,

which is a pretty universal

statement of what he's about,

and I think comes out of a period

of deep thought.

# Sakura

# Sakura... #

The idea was to create a piece that

brought the world together

in a sense.

Same principle as Armed Man -

looking forward to a better future

and doing away

with all the conflict.

I had a bit of guidance

from Nicol Matt,

the director of the

World Choir for Peace.

Most important for me

with Karl's music

is that he has really

a message to all of us.

Most of the people touches

their heart when they sing it,

and I think this is what makes

his music so successful.

It begins with the beginning

of creation,

and I've treated that two ways.

One, the cosmological approach

with the Big Bang.

CHOIR SINGS ONE HIGH NOTE

And the other one taking it from

Abrahamic religion,

which is the Old Testament,

and common to Islam and Judaism.

# In the beginning was the word

# And the word was with God...#

One of the interesting movements

was Let's Go,

which is the text of the

Tower of Babel

from the Bible,

which deals with the multiplicity

of languages in the world.

# Now, all the world

had one language, just the one... #

Karl invited our virtual choir

to come and be a part

of this premiere,

which meant that all of our singers

who have signed up

from around the world,

in more than 70 different countries

recorded their parts,

sometimes using nothing

more than a mobile phone,

and sent their recordings into us

for us to make into the final video.

# Babel

# Babel

# Babel

# Babel

# Babel

# Babel... #

At one point, they all diverge

into individuals and they start

speaking their individual tongues,

which, as far as the performance

goes, they can say anything

they want and in any

language they want.

But because of the blur,

it's a very effective noise.

LOUD INDISTINCT CHATTER

I think that since The Armed Man,

Karl has shown the world

that he has an instinctive feeling,

deep down,

for what might be done

through his music,

to make the world a better place.

# Om bhuh bhuva, suvah

# Tat savitur varenyam... #

There's a piece, Gayatri mantra,

comes from Sanskrit

and Hindu traditions,

and that starts with the choir

singing in a Namaste position,

like that.

# Om bhuh bhuva, suvah

# Tat savitur varenyam

# Bhargo devasya dhimahi

# Dhiyo yo nah pracodayat... #

From my experience, he writes

a lot of melodic lines,

which is easy to sing and to

memorise for choir members.

And also, the rhythm parts he has,

he works a lot with

percussion and so on

and all these, these ethnic

influence, and also from jazz.

And this is what makes

the music alive.

# Tat savitur varenyam... #

But at a certain point

they raise their hand like this.

And then in time with the pulse,

they do this.

# Varenyam

# Bhargo

# Devasya... #

The modern contemporary music

is very diversified.

So what I like about

his composing style

is that he tries to

include everything.

You can hear clear influences from

all the styles,

all the epochs of music.

And he tries also to integrate

all the cultural influences

from all over the world.

And also it's tonal.

It's not completely abstract.

I love it very much.

I first came across Karl Jenkins's

music about 20 years ago

when Adiemus came out,

and I was struck by it.

Struck first by my own reaction

at the directness of it

and then by the reaction

around the music industry,

which was totally polarised.

People were either extremely hostile

or they were quite excited

at the potential

of what this music was doing and

might be doing to the public.

# I ma lo ma i... #

Much of the hostility to Karl

was that he came from advertising,

which is, you know, in artistic

circles, strictly below the salt.

A lot of critics will

dismiss someone like Karl

because he's worked in advertising.

They have a prejudice against

somebody who has been commercial.

I mean, the fact that Bach and

Beethoven and Mozart all composed

to commissions is always forgotten.

I have learned that there are a

certain number of people

that when they get music and when it

is not written on the music, "Bach",

then it is bad.

To celebrate the Millennium,

BBC Wales commissioned an oratorio,

Dewi Sant, St David.

The television broadcast

was very, very successful.

Then it came as something

of a shock, after much discussion,

to find that Radio 3 were not

actually going to broadcast this.

I think that was at a time

when perhaps Karl's name

was still new to the scene,

perhaps regarded in some

conservative quarters

as being not quite the thing

in some ways.

But of course, all that's now past,

and I think his international

success is now such

that there's genuine acceptance that

he is a voice with something to say.

A lot of composers suffer

from critical opinion

at the point when they're writing,

and Karl's been

no exception to that.

But at Boosey & Hawkes, I mean,

we have a lot of records,

for example, of the way

that pieces by Benjamin Britten,

by Sergei Rachmaninoff,

by Leonard Bernstein, etc,

have been received over the years.

And, yes, all I can say is

it's nothing new

and time always filters things out.

And I feel very confident

that we're around somebody

who's writing

incredibly important music.

Some individuals will think

that it's not up to the standard

that is required of classical music,

and I think that's partly

the problem

in the classical music world,

actually.

And it's, I think and I believe

lots of young classical musicians

now are, are fighting to move on.

What critics say about music

is just one person's opinion.

I have listened to concerts

of new music,

I could take fingernails

and scratch it on a blackboard

and it would have the same effect.

And the critics raved about

the beauty of this new music,

but no-one in the audience

could go home humming

the scratch on the blackboard.

And that music is dead.

People that are good musicians

and are at the top of their tree

love his music.

People that are ashamed and

embarrassed by all things emotional

don't particularly like his music

because they think it's simplistic.

And if it's popular,

it can't be good.

What Karl Jenkins does in his music

is he delivers.

He gives you what you want,

but you don't actually have to go

out for it.

You don't have to fight for it, you

don't have to struggle with it

in the music.

It's all there for you on the page,

on the plate, ready for you.

As a musician, you know,

I increasingly get frustrated

with comments of,

"This isn't this style"

or, "This isn't this style."

And, you know, increasingly

with the internet now,

there are no CD shops, really,

there are no shelves any more.

It's whatever it is

and people enjoy it.

Melvyn Bragg said once, if it's got

longevity and memorability,

then it's art.

So I don't worry about whether

my music's art or not,

but it's stayed around a long time.

Forget the critics,

forget the sniffiness.

You know, what do the public

really think?

What does it mean to them?

And if it can change the public's

perception of this surrounding world

for the greater good,

that is civilising,

and that is the magic

of a great composer.

When the King was the

Prince of Wales,

a concerto was commissioned.

They chose a movement out of

this work to be played at the abbey

during the Coronation.

MUSIC: Tros y Garreg

by Karl Jenkins

It was an honour.

I think the thing that impressed

me most, it was part of history.

I saw the Queen's coronation

on television in Wales

on a little black and white

TV, 12-inch screen.

HE CHUCKLES

And most of the street

in our living room...

..in two rows of chairs,

when I was nine.

So little did I think then

that I'd be writing something

that would be played at the

coronation of the next monarch.

And, of course, there was another

story that went on that did

the rounds on social media,

that I was taken for being

Meghan Markle in disguise.

And if anyone had witnessed

what I had to go through

to get into the building, through

security, showing passports...

But it went kind of viral,

as they say.

I was getting drinks

from strangers in pubs.

HE LAUGHS

And selfies with people

on the street.

His music is going directly

to your soul.

People who are singing it,

and audience, if they

are above 60, 65 years

or they are 30 years,

both groups of ages

I have seen crying because those

people understand at once

the meaning of it.

The biggest word that he

doesn't understand is "corny".

So sometimes I have said, "That's

great, Karl, but it's a bit corny."

He said, "What's that?"

And it's not because he is corny,

it's because with emotions

in his music, nothing's held back.

It has a simplicity that goes

straight to people's hearts.

It's not, "Look at me doing

complicated things."

It's, "This is my music.

"This is what it is

and take it or leave it."

And that's what I like very much.

Karl would never probably

tell people this,

but he gets hundreds of letters

and correspondence, emails

and so forth from people

that just have to tell him

how his music's affected them.

I remember one where

a gentleman wrote to him

via his son,

because this person was blind.

And he said, "My son bought me

a copy of your music

"and I feel I can now see."

I thought that was so beautiful.

And he said, "I can see the colours

in your music."

And then a lady from Ireland

whose mother had been k*lled

on Christmas Day, and the only music

she could listen to was Karl's,

because it had everything.

If she wanted to cry,

there would be those moments.

And then if there was...

If she wanted to feel full of hope,

there were those moments.

So he does get a lot of

correspondence from people

who are really moved.

And he finds it strange sometimes,

but he's very humbled by it.

When you meet the most performed

composer in the popular music,

you will meet a man coming

out of a limousine with guards,

with glamour and glitter.

But when I was in London,

he came by foot to our hotel.

Then you are together

with a warm human being.

Once we were in Switzerland,

it was Christmas Day,

and our son Jody

came into our hotel room

and Karl was writing music.

And Jody said,

"What are you doing, Dad?"

And Karl said, "Well, the bar's

not open yet,

"so I just thought I'd write

a bit of music."

And he really, literally

does write music most days.

When we first had the opportunity

to be in a room with Karl,

both my colleague, Jamie,

and I were very nervous because,

you know, he is such a huge name.

And we were very surprised

at how quickly he put us at ease,

made us feel like

we were talking as equals.

And it was humbling.

# Ring

# Ring

# Ring. #

# God shall

# Wipe away

# All tears... #

I think I'd always describe myself

as a composer or a writer of music.

That would be number one.

It makes me what I am, I suppose,

more than,

perhaps more than it should.

My self-esteem isn't amazingly high.

HE LAUGHS

Other than...

Other than what I do,

I don't think...

Well, I know I'm not arrogant.

I don't have an ego

you know, compared

to the masters of the past,

Mahler, Richard Strauss, whatever.

I'm of no consequence whatsoever.

But I feel I do write music that

seems to connect with people.

And if I didn't make that emotional

connection with people,

I don't think I'd compose.

Many composers, historically,

there'd be quite a few who write

symphonies in their own world

and finish it and put it in the

drawer and start the next one.

And I see, personally, I see no...

It's great for them.

I see no point in doing

that if it doesn't,

if the music doesn't speak to people

and make that communication.

One critic said to me in what was

supposed to be a deprecating remark,

that I was, what did he say,

emotionally manipulative,

which I thought was

a huge compliment, actually.

He didn't mean it as such.

But if you can make people laugh

or cry, or feel sad, or feel happy,

or everything in between, I, I...

I would think that's a pretty good

skill to have as a writer of music.