As If

Soft Machine: Elton Dean (alto sax), Mike Ratledge (Fender Rhodes), Hugh Hopper (double bass, electric bass) and Phil Howard (drums). From the album Fifth (1972).
In 1999 Karl Jenkins composed a Mass (sacred musical genre) entitled The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace dedicated to the victims of the Kosovo crisis, and it’s an anti-belicist work based on the Catholic Mass combined with the 15th century popular song “L ‘homme armé”. It’s written for choir and orchestra, and was represented in London in 2000 for the millennium celebrations. His choral work The Peacemakers contains texts by the Dalai Lama, Anne Frank, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, along with passages from the Bible and the Quran, and writings for the occasion by Terry Waite (humanitarian activist and English writer).

The Peacemakers cover

In 2005 Jenkins wrote and conducted a Requiem, which was premiered and recorded at Southwark Cathedral that same year by the Western Kazakhstan Philharmonic Orchestra and his Adiemus percussion and brass group. The result was an 18-track album entitled Requiem/In These Horizons Stones Sing. He also composed the music for the television series The Story of Wales broadcast in 2012. In 2014 he debuted and recorded another work called The Healer - A Cantata For St Luke at St Luke’s Church in Grayshott (Hampshire). In 2015 it premiered at at New York’s Carnegie Hall and the Warner Classics label released an 8-CD box set with the recording named Voices.

Karl Jenkins

That same year also went on sale the compilation CD Still With The Music together with his autobiography under the same title. In 2016 he presented and recorded at the Wales Millennium Center the choral work Cantata Memory: For the Children in memory of the accident that took place in the Welsh village of Aberfan in 1966, in which the spoil tip of a coal mine crumbled and 144 people died. The concert was published by the Deutsche Grammophon record company. Jenkins is a doctor of music from the University of Wales and member of the Royal Academy of Music. In 2005 he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire, in 2010 Commander of the same Order and in 2015 Knight Bachelor.

** Karl Jenkins**

The introduction is made by Dean with the saxello, Ratledge producing a similar sound with the organ and playing in unison with Dean, and Howard accompanying them. The composition continues with the rhythm section playing softly and Dean in a free but subtle way. However, his restless and nervous solo gradually increases in volume until he gets the protagonism, sometimes doing overblowing as it’s usual in free jazz. Next Hopper enters playing the double bass with the bow and offering an equally agitated speech making occasionally weird noises, but later he calms down and also uses the low tones, which he combines with the noises. At last, the rhythm section is left alone and then Dean, Ratledge and Howard repeat the introduction in a shorter way.

Karl Jenkins