Karl Jenkins

Karl Jenkins is undoubtedly a worldwide success

and he's written for our times.

He's done some wonderful compositions

and I think it just appeals to people.

There is something about Karl's music that touches

a lot of people's hearts.

His music is powerful

because he's able to convey deep emotions that lie within all of us,

and somehow resonate and communicate with people across a wide spectrum.

It's very easy to write a piece of music that 40 people think is fantastic.

It's very difficult to write a piece of music that

holds onto its integrity, and holds onto its meaning,

and millions of people admire.

Karl Jenkins is Britain's most successful and best-selling classical composer,

with his music dominating the contemporary classical scene.

But his route to classical acclaim has not been a traditional path

and, although classically trained,

it was as a jazz rock pioneer in the '70s and then the heyday of the '80s advertising boom

where he first made his name.

Karl is without doubt the composer of our time.

Karl was born on the Gower.

His father was Welsh, his mother half-Swedish.

It was a musical upbringing in the small coastal village of Penclawdd.

Penclawdd is quite unique, I think.

Language-wise, it's a split village -

English and Welsh are equally spoken, I believe.

My family weren't Welsh-speaking.

This is a photograph of my father in his concert gear.

Schoolteacher by profession, but a musician at weekends.

There was always music in the house,

either him playing, or LP - as they were then - albums.

My grandmother was a cockle picker

who used to go to Newport every weekend to sell cockles.

She met my grandfather there who was a Swedish sailor,

of a Swedish ship.

And he stayed and they got married.

He settled in South Wales and my mother was born.

A photograph of my mother taken some years before I was born.

In fact, we went to live in Sweden when I was very young because she had tuberculosis.

It was thought that the air would be better for her there.

So, in fact, I actually learnt Swedish before I learnt English,

insomuch at that age, whatever you can learn at that age

and, sadly, she died when I was four or five.

These are my two Welsh grandparents.

When my mother died, my father and I moved in with her

and my widowed aunt Evelyn.

So they kind of raised me, with my father.

So I had a lot of kind of love and family atmosphere,

family love, around me,

so it was a happy childhood, despite the loss of my mother.

Karl's musical upbringing through his early years at Gowerton Grammar,

and in the youth orchestras, were to cement his career in music.

Well, it was always by a process of elimination, I suppose, I ended up being a musician.

I never thought about it too much.

I did music for O level and then it was one of three for A level

and then I had to decide.

It wasn't a decision and so it was, er,

kind of predestined in a way, without being precious about it.

I just did it and applied to University of Wales Cardiff,

Cardiff University, and went there.

Then later, after postgraduate, to the Royal Academy in London.

Although Karl and his wife Carol travel

the world for appearances and performances,

they split their time between their flat in London and their home on the Gower.

I was living in a flat in Westbourne Grove

and there was a Welsh trombone player in the flat below.

He kept talking about this Karl Jenkins,

and he'd been on the radio doing jazz.

So the first time I actually met him was on the stairs.

He was very thin and had a white scarf wrapped several times around him,

and he was a chain smoker then.

And I thought he was decidedly odd.

The first actual big date was in Highgate Cemetery

cos Karl's really big on cemeteries!

And I can remember he was wearing this white suit,

and we were just walking amongst the graves, as if that was the norm.

He had nothing, really.

He didn't have a car, his jacket had fallen off the back of a lorry, I suppose.

Erm, but he was always very passionate about music.

We've been together 38 years this year,

and I've watched him as his career has got bigger and bigger,

and I think it really is all down to respect,

because I respect and admire what he does enormously,

and I'm very involved in it.

And he, in my own little way, he admires what I do,

in the mostly educational music world.

Karl's musical style is impossible to categorise,

but one who knows him,

who has worked with him over the years whilst at Classic FM and EMI,

is current chief executive of the Welsh Rugby Union Roger Lewis.

I suppose I first encountered Karl in the '70s,

with bands such as Nucleus and Soft Machine.

But it wasn't until later years that I discovered that Karl

was this Welshman from Gowerton, from Penclawdd,

with this great passion for Wales and things Welsh,

that was that member of that particular group.

When I first heard them, I thought they were amazing.

I mean, we both had a classical education, musically,

but Karl had gone off into the jazz area,

and I was absolutely in awe of these people,

because I could never do what they do.

I mean, I think you're born with that gift.

Different parts of music you can learn.

You could almost learn to be a conductor, dare I say,

but with jazz, you've either got it or you haven't.

Without doubt, Karl is a musician who's got a huge, huge hunger

for searching out new and different sounds.

He is truly a creative musical anthropologist, I suppose.

And that's been shown throughout all of his work,

and you could see those early roots

in those jazz fusion days of the '70s.

It was the next step in his career which took Karl even further away

from a more traditional route to classical acclaim,

and also signalled the beginning of his commercial classical success.

It was here in the '80s boom of the ad world that Karl made a name for himself,

revolutionising the future of TV commercials

and working with one of the most successful ad agencies, Bartle Bogle Hegarty.

Although I work in advertising, I don't live in advertising.

I want people who aren't going to write advertising music for me.

I don't want that. I don't want a jingle.

I want a piece of music that people go,

"Wow! I want to go back and listen to that again and again."

Back in sort of '83, '84, we were working on some Levi's projects,

and we'd written this sort of script about

a guy smuggling jeans into the Soviet Union,

and what I wanted was a piece of Soviet music to start it with that,

when it was revealed that it was Levi's he was smuggling in,

it resolved itself into a modern piece of music.

And sort of talking to Karl and listening to how he spoke,

and how he talked about the music,

I began to realise this man was classically trained.

And you sort of stand back slightly... "Ah.

"I think he really knows what he's talking about, John.

"Maybe you'd better..."

So it was wonderful work and I love working with people like that.

Television commercials then were of a pretty high standard.

I mean, very, what became iconic film directors worked in the medium,

and I worked on films by people like Ridley Scott and Alan Parker.

People like this were working in the genre, really.

So I got used to discipline then,

cos it had to be delivered on a certain day, by a certain time, and recorded.

If it didn't, well, you didn't work.

You didn't get paid and didn't work again.

Great creative people are ciphers.

They absorb all the stuff around them.

They absorb things and it comes out of them, in some shape or form.

And I think that's what Karl has.

He has this ability to sense what's going on around him

and reinterpret it as a piece of music.

And I think that's what makes great creative people.

Karl was making a name for himself

and creating a new style of musical soundtrack for advertising campaigns.

He was then approached to make a commercial for Delta Airlines.

An album based on Delta Airlines theme Adiemus was then released

and became an instant success,

and resulted in more than 3 million album sales worldwide.

It introduced Karl to a new and appreciative audience,

and captured the imagination

of many of the world's top artists and performers.

I think I first became aware of Karl's music really through television

and I remember seeing Adiemus

and this word coming up so many times

I was thinking, "What is this? What is this?"

And then I experienced sort of clips of the music,

and I was so intrigued by that, that I then tried to find out

where performances might be, where recordings may be and so on.

And to discover that this music was written, in fact,

by a British composer...

And that was really when I first became aware of Karl's music

and I was really, truly intrigued by that.

There was just something about this piece

that just simply planted that seed of curiosity.

The first time that I heard Karl Jenkins's music was

when I started travelling to America from Manchester Airport.

I always used to use a certain airline which had Karl's Adiemus

constantly playing whilst you were on the plane,

boarding and when you arrived at different cities.

And I was instantly interested and curious to who had composed

such beautiful tones, beautiful melodies, very catchy melodies.

In a way, the simplicity was magical

and the almost childlike progression of certain harmonies was so magical and priceless

that you found that that was a gift you were given forever more.

The trouble is in our culture,

when you put the word popular with creative,

it somehow demeans it.

And that, to me, is a great tragedy. It's a great shame.

And there's a terrible, terrible snobbishness about that.

And I think the creative work I appreciate is work that

has an integrity, it has a power and meaning to it, yet it's inclusive.

And that's what we mean by popular. It is including people.

And, actually, I challenge people to say that is actually the hardest thing to do.

It's very easy to write a piece of music that 40 people think is fantastic.

It's very difficult to write a piece of music that holds onto its integrity, holds onto its meaning,

and millions of people admire.

That's what's very difficult.

People knock advertising but it's such a skill to conjure up

a mood and a picture in, like, 30 seconds.

There's a real craft in doing that.

There is a feeling in the classical musical industry

that if it sells, it can't be any good.

And people can be very snobbish about film composers

and people who've come to the more serious side of classical music

from pop or jingles or whatever.

I think that it's very important to realise that, actually,

there is no merit in that at all,

because Shostakovich, for example, was a very eminent film writer,

Walton... I mean, many, many composers have written film music,

and they are greatly regarded today.

So anybody, any contemporary composer,

who can actually find an audience gets my respect,

not just for commercial reasons, but for creative ones, too.

As to him starting off commercially,

or starting off in the field hat he's in,

I don't think it makes very much difference.

He created a piece of music and the commercial company took it up, so...

I mean, I've been in things that were commercial as well.

It doesn't mean to say I was anything different than what I am,

just a classical singer.

And he's a lovely composer.

Karl's career path has since followed a more traditional route,

but has never been predictable.

His musical collaborations and classical compositions

read like a Who's Who of the classical world,

from Dame Kiri Te Kanawa to Julian Lloyd Webber.

I think Karl has a gift which...

People kind of think it's an easy gift,

but he can write very catchy things.

He can write things with hooks on them

and people instantly remember it.

And that sounds easy, but it isn't,

and Karl definitely has that in spades.

I think that making a connection and communicating with an audience

is what it's all about, essentially.

And many, nowadays, don't do that.

They don't make an emotional connection,

which is possibly why I'm not liked in certain circles,

because I write accessible music that is emotional

and does appeal to people.

I mean, some critic said to me once that I was emotionally manipulative,

which I think is quite a nice thing to say!

I'm quite proud of that, actually.

If I actually can, you know, make people's emotions change,

cos that's what I do.

So, yes, making a connection with an audience is crucially important.

One of Karl's most highly acclaimed and most popular pieces is

The Armed Man: A Mass For Peace.

With its haunting cello solo, Benedictus,

it has made Karl the world's most-performed living composer.

The idea behind the piece was they wanted a work,

calling it A Mass For Peace,

that told the story and the horrors of conflict,

but which looked forward towards a better future for mankind in 2000,

hoping for a century of peace and, of course,

it hasn't kicked off too well, this last 10 years, cos nothing's changed.

The piece is actually dedicated to the victims of Kosovo

because when I was writing it in 1999 or whenever,

just leading up to 2000,

that was the Iraq or Afghanistan of the day, if you like.

Erm, and one was constantly reminded of the horrors

that were taking place in the Balkans.

So I decided to dedicate it to

the memory of the victims of that conflict.

People respond to his music,

whether they're grieving, whether they're happy.

All different kinds of reasons and different emotions.

And he has amazing letters and e-mails from people. I mean...

It makes me want to cry, thinking about it, but, um,

a lady whose mother was murdered tragically, Christmas Day,

and she found enormous solace in

the Benedictus from The Armed Man, the mass,

and she just kept playing it and felt strengthened by it, really.

I remember I was standing in a record shop,

when they used to have record shops,

and this little old lady came up to me and recognised me.

And she said her husband had just died and she wanted...

She was trying to find this beautiful cello piece with a choir,

and did I know what it was?

As soon as she said that, I knew what it was.

And I think there is something about Karl's music

that touches a lot of people's hearts.

So that's why he's an international composer.

It's a very difficult thing to write music which has a serious purpose

and is trying to make a serious statement,

especially on some very difficult subjects sometimes,

if you think about the Balkan War, for example,

and yet to make it something that can resonate very popularly with people

because you need melody.

You need something that is memorable.

You need something that stays in the mind,

and yet you also need something

that is going to create a dynamic, energetic impact.

Very few people can do it and Karl is certainly one of them.

The Armed Man, with its resonance and relevance to modern-day conflict,

played a significant role in the tenth anniversary of 9/11,

accompanied by the UK's largest choral society.

It was amazing coincidence that

the piece I'm performing in New York, on 9/11,

The Armed Man: A Mass For Peace

was actually released on the very day of 9/11.

When we were thinking about what repertoire to schedule for this,

the tenth anniversary, 9/11, New York,

we knew that we wanted to have Karl involved.

We've done so many of his different works

that they all would have worked, but it was just...

It's, again, difficult to put into words,

but The Armed Man just rose to the surface immediately,

because of the emotion, because of the ties to strife and war,

and how that leads to peace and hope.

And that's what we're trying to do today.

# A shroud that mushroomed out

# And struck the dawn of the sky... #

# Black, red, blue

# Dance in the air... #

I'm very emotional about it all.

I haven't been able to sing one of the pieces without crying,

to be honest. But I do...

I think the horror of what happened,

the number of people who died in the way they died,

and the number of people who were never found...

I find it...heartbreaking,

quite honestly.

# Quivering like seaweed, the mass of flames spurts forward. #

It's such an honour to work with Karl Jenkins.

Karl is actually the most-performed living composer

of serious music alive today.

And we are delighted to be here.

# The trumpet's loud clangour excites us to arms

# Excites us to arms

# Excites us to arms

# The trumpet's loud clangour excites us to arms

# Excites us to arms

# Excites us to arms... #

One audience member - she was nearly in tears, which was lovely.

She had seen one of the Twin Towers come down, actually,

from her flat ten years ago.

So she had come to this performance,

and she said she was really moved by it and thanked us, which was nice.

It's been something to allow us to reflect and to, you know,

remember where we were when it happened,

and I think the slogan 'never forget' is something

that we should try to live by, not just for things like 9/11,

but for other really big pillars of national and international significance

for our countries as we grow, and then also as individuals,

as we, you know, become better people because of the circumstances.

It was a hugely moving experience.

It was a full house and a huge reaction at the end,

so it'll stay with me for ever, really, that whole experience.

And being in New York at that period as well had a...

not strange, but it had an emotional, tangible feel to it, you know,

to the ambience and the atmosphere, really.

At the moment, we're in Gower, where I live when I'm not in London,

in my studio, which is where I work.

But I work in London and I work wherever. I can work anywhere.

All I need is my basic materials which, nowadays,

comprise a keyboard and my laptop.

It's beautiful here and it's kind of idyllic kind of area.

But that actually has no bearing on what I write.

As long as I have these basic tools, that's fine.

I'm very disciplined, yeah, and I also don't believe in inspiration.

It's a job of work in one sense.

I rise very early, usually, 5 o'clock, and do a few hours.

I rest in the afternoon and do a couple more hours,

and then have the evening off.

That's usually my daily pattern, but I find if you don't do it,

it's no good kind of wandering around,

waiting for the muse to hit, or whatever.

You have to do it. And the more you do it, the easier it gets, you know.

It's like anything else creative. You have good days and bad days.

So the good days are kind of...

Progress is, is...kind of rapid, I suppose. You can work quickly.

And then the other days - it takes longer.

From the land of storytellers,

this is a story of the land itself and of the peoples who've shaped it.

One of Karl's major projects for 2012 was composing the title music

for the landmark BBC Wales series, The Story Of Wales.

SOARING ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYS

What we want more than anything is a music which is epic in its sweep,

which is powerful and which conveys, if you like, an arc of Welsh history.

That 30,000 years compressed into six hours. You need that sense of power.

Who are you going to turn to?

Well, there is only one person, in my view, that you turn to.

That is Karl.

Because he has the knack of making music that is popular

but is also epic and significant in a statement he tries to make.

The brief was it had to have slightly epic,

convey the panorama of countryside

and in particular Welsh countryside, I suppose.

So I had to come up with a theme that had those qualities.

I'm happy to say that they liked what I presented.

What he's come up with something that is both beautiful and majestic,

fits the bill exactly.

And, key thing, very memorable.

Music has always taken centre stage in the Jenkins household,

so it was a thriving environment for Carol and Karl

to bring up their son, Jody,

who would also go on to forge his own career

in the music industry as a percussionist

and also a successful composer for film and television.

Take a seat.

I'll play you some stuff.

It was natural our son,

he inherited whatever genes we have in that direction.

He was a very successful percussionist,

won a scholarship at the Royal Academy,

and then changed to composition. He's now writing film music.

Growing up in the Jenkins household

was certainly very musically orientated.

I started having piano lessons at a very young age,

three or four with my mother.

It wasn't so much that I was always practising,

it's just that music was always around the house.

I certainly remember being a lazy teenager in bed and being able

to hear two pianos being thumped downstairs in different rooms.

One from each of my two parent composers.

He has a similar outlook to me in many ways in that he also

doesn't put music in categories or compartments, as does Carol,

my wife is exactly the same.

We've a very broad outlook on different musical styles

and genres and appreciate music in different spheres, really.

We wrote a children's opera together, which was a nightmare.

Divorce was imminent because it took three months of me saying,

"Well, I'm not changing the words."

And he'd say, "I'm not changing the music."

But if you mentioned that to him now

he wouldn't recollect that it was difficult at all.

And even Jody, I was writing some piano music one day

and he heard one bar and said, "I don't like that bar, mum."

Of course I said, "What do you mean you don't like that bar?"

But of course I did change it.

So the three of us, we listen to what the other person is saying.

Looking back, I suppose it was quite inevitable,

but I certainly wasn't pushed into music.

It was just that it was always around me

and always around the house.

I think I was made to feel that it was a worthwhile thing

to pursue at a hobby or amateur level.

And the passion just grew from there really.

Professionally, we've worked on many great things together.

Perhaps less so now, but early on I contributed lots of percussion

and production work to some of Adiemus project

and some of his other albums.

It was very gratifying.

It was a pleasure to work with him in that way.

We still do the occasional thing together. It's a lot of fun.

And perhaps it's Karl's experience of collaborating

with his closest family which may have contributed

to the way others feel about working with him.

He's a very quiet man. You don't have any flying saucers.

There is not a sort of firework display at every corner.

He's just very unassuming and very quiet.

He's not mad, he's not eccentric I don't think. He's not a fireball.

But he quietly does this wonderful music.

He is very easy to work with.

He's very charming and his family are wonderful, too.

As for waiting an atomic bomb to go off every day,

it just doesn't happen.

But the stuff is all in his music, that's where it should be.

I want to work more with Karl. He's a very astute composer.

He's a gentleman, he's a scholar, he's very quiet.

But yet when he has something to say to you,

especially in the recording department when he's producing,

he tells you what should be said.

He has no qualms about saying, "You were flat, you were sharp,

"you were behind the beat, you were in front of the beat."

And the collaboration, that's what music is all about,

people working together.

MUSIC: FANFARA from THE PEACEMAKERS

In 2012, a major new work by Karl, The Peacemakers,

achieved another major commercial success

by going straight in at number one to the UK classical charts.

CHOIR SINGS 'FANFARA' FROM THE PEACEMAKERS

The text is drawn from iconic peacemakers

like Gandhi, Mandela, Martin Luther King, Dalai Lama.

Even Terry Waite has contributed some text.

I met Karl at the Eisteddfod.

We were chatting together and he said to me,

what are you doing now?

I said, "I'm writing a new book, and I'm writing a book of poetry."

Now that, his ears pricked up. He said, "Oh, that's very interesting.

"I'm currently writing a work on peace. Are you interested in that?"

I said I was very interested in it. I said, "I'd love to hear it."

He said, "Would you like to contribute towards it?"

We've got works in there from people far greater than myself,

from Ghandi, Desmond Tutu, or whoever, Mother Teresa.

I said, "I don't think I'm their scale

"but I'll try and write something for you."

# Peace is the fragile meeting

# Of two souls in harmony

# Peace is an embrace

# That protects and heals

I went away, wrote a small piece on peace and sent it off to him.

And then I heard no more for a while.

Then he came back and said, "It's been recorded,

"it's been sung by a soprano.

"The orchestra have now put the whole work together."

Honestly, I felt so honoured by that.

# I offer you peace, I offer you love

# I offer you, offer you friendship

# I see your beauty

# I hear your need

# I feel your feelings

# My wisdom flows from the highest source

# I salute that source in you... #

I'm not a pacifist in the sense I think some wars are justified,

like the Second World War when Europe was defended by Britain and the Allies.

But I don't think what's recently been happening in Iraq and elsewhere is justified.

That's my general view on it.

But I suppose people logically would welcome peace,

so in that sense it was important to me.

But I wasn't on any kind of crusade.

Karl is a remarkable man. He is remarkably modest.

He's a great humanitarian.

And humanitarians have a way of expressing themselves

through words, through actions.

Karl expresses his humanitarian understanding through music.

And his music is powerful

because he's able to convey deep emotions that lie within all of us.

And somehow resonate and communicate with people across a wide spectrum.

SWEEPING VIOLIN MUSIC

I feel that Karl's music has gained such commercial success because first of all,

it is completely appropriate to be performed in a live performance

or as part of a television advert or as part of film music.

For music to be so adaptable, someone like Bach's music, JS Bach,

he could do that, and we're doing that with his music today.

I feel that with Karl's music,

it will still be around for decades to come, for centuries to come.

CHOIR SINGS SOFTLY

CHOIR BUILDS TO CRESCENDO

To have the experience of seeing the man who actually composed the music.

If you saw Haydn conducting his own music,

it's the same sort of experience.

So that's what I'm looking forward to.

It's his music, he's interpreting it the way he wants to interpret it.

SOARING CHORAL MUSIC

I feel very proud of him.

He's a true Welshman and he is the future of classical music.

He writes for our times.

He writes specific music that people can react to.

I think that's why people react to his music, and long may it continue.

FLUTE PLAYS PEACEFULLY

Many contemporary composers find it quite a struggle

during their lifetime, but I think he will be remembered through his music.

I think that he has already left a legacy which is very distinguished.

The exciting thing is that there's a lot more to come.

He's certainly not going to give up... Till he pops off.

Till he pops his clogs he'll be writing dots.

I'm trying to write ideas that live beyond the borders

of advertising but actually enter into popular culture.

And I want to work with people who can do that as well.

That's what, for me, Karl was able to create.

For me, he's a composer, he's a musician.

What kind of musician, what sort of composer?

I don't know, but he communicates right there.

He touches the very depths in people.

Now, how that happens and why that happens, I don't know.

Some music floats over the top of you.

You hear it and you don't necessarily, it doesn't touch you.

You can't listen to Karl's music without being touched by it.

That is a quality that he has, and all I can say is it's a gift.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd