Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Limited 20 May 2005 for immediate release Karl Jenkins Requiem premiere in London and UK tour Photo: Mitch Jenkins Karl Jenkins Requiem, the latest work by Karl Jenkins, receives its world premiere Requiem at Southwark Cathedral in London on 2 June. Already available on (world premiere) CD from EMI (7243 5 57966 2), the work has proved an instant 2 June 2005 success, topping the UK classical charts within a month of its release. Southwark Cathedral, The concert premiere features Jenkins conducting the same forces as London on the disc: the West Kazakhstan Philharmonic Orchestra and Adiemus percussion and brass, with Nicole Tibbels (soprano), Clive Bell (shakuhachi), Sam Landman (treble) and Catrin Finch (harp). In addition to Requiem, the concert includes the ever-popular Palladio for strings, harp arrangements by Jenkins for Catrin Finch, and music from The Armed Man, String Quartet No.2 and Imagined Oceans arranged for string orchestra. Box office: 08700 60010.
UK concert tour Plans are underway for a 20-concert autumn tour of Requiem 17 Sep - 29 Oct 2005 around UK cathedrals this autumn (17 September – 29 October). Performances feature either the Welsh Chamber Orchestra or West Kazakhstan Philharmonic Orchestra with conducting shared between Karl Jenkins and John Gibbons. Venues include Guildford Cathedral (17 September), St Llandaff Cathedral in Cardiff (1 October), Clifton Cathedral in Bristol (2 October), York Minster (12 October), Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral (15 October) and Newcastle (29 October).
Requiem is coupled on the EMI disc with In These Stones Horizons Sing, premiered last year at the opening of the Wales Millennium Centre, and featuring Bryn Terfel as baritone soloist. Boosey & Hawkes has published a complete vocal score of Requiem, which is available from www.boosey.com/shop and all good music retailers.
“…the ultimate in postmodern Requiems…” Music Week
In his new Requiem Jenkins interpolates the usual movements of the Requiem Mass with a series of haiku settings in Japanese, moving between the liturgical view of death and that observed in the natural world. As the work progresses the contrasting spheres move closer together, with the last two haiku settings appearing within the Benedictus and Agnus Dei. The instrumentation adopts a deliberate oriental air, with Japanese shakuhachi (though traditional flute remains an alternative), Arabic darabuca, Japanese daiko and frame drums.
The Armed Man Requiem looks set to emulate the success of Jenkins’s The Armed goes gold on CD Man: A Mass for Peace, which went gold in March with over 100,000 discs sold. The earlier work also gained a high position for Jenkins in Classic FM’s 2005 Hall of Fame, where listeners voted for it as the ninth most popular work, and he appeared, as last year, as the only living classical composer in the top ten. Other Jenkins works appearing in Classic FM’s top 300 were Adiemus: Songs of Sanctuary and Palladio.
For further information visit www.boosey.com/jenkins or contact: David Allenby (Head of Publicity and Marketing) on [email protected] or tel: +44 (0)20 7054 7253 Jo Dawson (Publicity Assistant) on [email protected] or tel: +44 (0)20 7054 7254