Karl Jenkins: The Composer behind the Moustache (2024) Movie Script
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 cockle picker,
and every weekend she used to go to
the bigger towns to sell cockles -
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 war,
why we go to war, and the horrible
consequences of war,
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
"war 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.
War 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 killed
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.
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 cockle picker,
and every weekend she used to go to
the bigger towns to sell cockles -
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 war,
why we go to war, and the horrible
consequences of war,
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
"war 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.
War 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 killed
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.