Karl Jenkins

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand six.

Presenter0:27

My Castaway this week is Britain's most successful contemporary composer, Carl Jenkins. His affinity with music began, conventionally enough, in Wales, with an organist choir master father, who schooled him in early piano lessons. He later went on to study at the Royal Academy of Music in London. But that's where the solid predictability of his musical journey ends.

Presenter0:48

In the late sixties and seventies he took a tour into Jazz Fusion, winning first prize at the Montreux Jazz Festival and performing at Carnegie Hall and Ronnie Scott's. In the eighties he gave up Life on the Road to write music and jingles for big budget ads, with customers including Delta Air Lines, Pepsi, De Beers, and Levi's. More awards followed.

Presenter1:08

Now his full length symphonies sell like hot cakes around the world, and his crowd pleasing compositions have seen him voted into Classic FM's Hall of Fame, the only living composer to make it.

Presenter1:20

But his music also excites a good deal of huffing and puffing from the critics for, among other things, being uncomplicated, hummable, and safe

Presenter1:29

In reply, he says I write music that connects with a lot of people and gives them, they say, some spiritual solace. So maybe I'm doing something right. You are, then, Carl Jenkins, that rare thing, a contemporary composer who sells a lot of records. Do you think of your audience when you compose?

Karl Jenkins1:46

No,'cause I think it'd be fatal to second guess what people want or what people like. I write for myself and it I'm fortunate in to a certain degree that my music is accessible.

Presenter1:57

Where do you take your inspiration from?

Karl Jenkins1:59

Well, my inf influence is under the Norman influence is the canon of classical music, but I've also, having been a bit of a musical tourist, if you like, drawn from jazz and ethnic music, so all different styles have gone into the melting pot and come out in what I am now.

Presenter2:14

And this spiritual solace that I referred to there and that you mention, that dimension, do we do we need to be comforted? Or are we a generation that needs spiritual comfort?

Karl Jenkins2:24

Yes, I think so. I mean, in Japan, my music is called healing music. They have a special category for this kind of um sound world. It it means different things to different people, of course, but I'm told there's a spiritual element in what I do. And this is apart from the obviously religious works like the you know, the um the masses and the requiems.

Presenter2:41

What about categorization, then? Is it classical?

Karl Jenkins2:44

Well, I've always resisted that. You know, I hate labels and putting music into boxes. But what it is, it doesn't matter. It's classically based, certainly. It's based on classical principles, very often orchestral and choral. It just borrows from other cultures.

Presenter2:56

As I mentioned, your success in your record sales seem to irritate people that we might bracket as musical purists. They say it satisfies a public appetite for music that sounds classical but isn't. You know, they say it's too bland.

Presenter3:09

It's too commercial, what do you say to them?

Karl Jenkins3:11

Well, it's I think, yes, it's, you know, it's difficult for me to speak for myself, but my um

Presenter3:17

You can be as cheeky as you like.

Karl Jenkins3:19

Well, why should one listen to, you know, the opinions of people who are kind of by nature what they do, less talented than I am, otherwise they'd be doing something. People who have fewer musical qualifications than I have and are more narrow-minded than I am. So I don't think their opinion is worth that much, really.

Presenter3:36

What's your first record?

Karl Jenkins3:37

My first one is um an opera by Wagner, the Master Sings of Nuremberg, which as is always the case with these these things, you can we can listen to it on different levels, but it's actually quite a funny opera. It's about a prize song. This is uh Domingo singing the the actual prize song.

Presenter4:54

Placido Domingo singing the Prize song from Wagner's The Master Singers of Nuremberg with the Orchestra of the German Opera of Berlin, conducted by Eugen Joachim.

Presenter5:04

So it was an unconventional journey that you've taken throughout your life as a musician and a composer, but it was a very conventional start, Carl Jenkins. Your father was a teacher, an organist, a choir master in small town Wales.

Karl Jenkins5:18

Yes, it was a small village called Penglau on the Gao Peninsula, and my father was hugely influential both as a parent and as a musician. My mother died when I was quite young, four or five, and I was raised by him and my aunt and grandmother. But yes, he was a very good organist and choirmaster and introduced me to music at a very young age and kind of started me off on the piano.

Presenter5:39

You immediately took to it.

Karl Jenkins5:41

Up to a point. Not totally. It was only later when I found the oboe that I when I went to grammar school, as it was then, that I found an instrument that actually suited me and I was reasonably uh good at.

Presenter5:52

In those very young years, before your mother died, you travelled often between Wales and Sweden.

Karl Jenkins5:57

Yes, my mother's uh on the maternal side, my grandfather was a Swedish seaman who came to Wales on a merchant ship. I met my grandmother and stayed.

Karl Jenkins6:05

So I did indeed, I spent a lot of years in Sweden.

Presenter6:07

So you don't really have memories of that.

Karl Jenkins6:09

Odd odd flashes of recollections, but nothing nothing major now.

Presenter6:12

And memories of your mother?

Karl Jenkins6:14

Vague, yes, a couple of oc uh, once again, vague occasions I can recall. This maybe sounds strange, but just a kind of angelic looking woman, I suppose. That's that's the main recollection I have, and very calm.

Presenter6:27

And she died of T B.

Karl Jenkins6:28

Yes, yeah.

Presenter6:29

And so once she had died, you were, you say, four almost five your father was left on his own and what happened to the family?

Karl Jenkins6:36

Well we moved I was an only child. We moved in with my aunt, who was widowed at that time, and my grandmother, and there were many other relations around, further aunts and uncles in the chain. So despite it sounding quite a sad beginning, it had a very happy childhood really from there on.

Presenter6:52

And what about small town Wales in those days? This was a community where your father was not only a teacher, but the organist and the choir master. I mean, presumably he occupied a fairly central role in the community.

Karl Jenkins7:03

He did, but being a small Welsh village there were three chapels and one church there, so

Karl Jenkins7:09

So there were quite a few influential people in the community at that time, but um music was always played around the house and he was the main main person who guided my life really.

Presenter7:19

Was it clear to your dad and the rest of your family that here was a boy with talent once you started playing properly?

Karl Jenkins7:25

To a certain degree, yes. I mean, I didn't find out what I was good at until maybe a few years ago really, but um when I graduated to the Oboe and Woodwind family of instruments it all kind of fell into place.

Presenter7:38

You wrote a jazz piece later in, I think, the late sixties or seventies called Lullaby for a Lonely Child. Was that about memories of those Welsh days?

Karl Jenkins7:47

Yeah, I suppose so. People have asked me if that's kind of about me, but it was it was kind of a nice name really. A nice title. So I suppose it's it's slightly kind of um you know, about myself to a certain extent, but I wouldn't um

Karl Jenkins8:04

Said too much by the title.

Presenter8:06

What's your next record?

Karl Jenkins8:07

Well, my father's influence was huge and Bach was always being played around the house, the first composer I really heard. And as I said, I went on to play the oboe. So the oboe's been kind of a featured instrument in my life. My daughter-in-law, Rosie, is now an oboist, professional oboist. So this is a concerto, which I in fact played with my father conducting at one point. And Rosie's played it as well. I've heard her play it recently. It's a double concerto of Bach for Berlin and Oboe.

Presenter9:32

Part of the first movement of Bach's concerto for violin, oboe, and strings in C minor, with Marike Blunkerstein, Douglas Boyd, and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, conducted by Alexander Schneider.

Presenter9:44

So Carl Jenkins, a clearly and early established relationship with music. How did you listen to music at home? I mean, did you all gather round the gramophone player together or the radio together?

Karl Jenkins9:54

Well, my father and I used to listen to music together.

Karl Jenkins9:57

We are quite a large collection, almost totally classical.

Presenter10:01

Did you like it?

Karl Jenkins10:02

Yes, I did. I did I did like it.

Karl Jenkins10:05

I liked Bach a lot, and he introduced me to whole old rafter music, you know, the usual people, Mozart, Marla, Bruckner.

Presenter10:13

And was it

Karl Jenkins10:13

And was it a single thing?

Presenter10:14

What about school then? Did were you taught well at school in terms of music?

Karl Jenkins10:17

Here it was a fantastic school, as an old-fashioned Welsh grammar school were.

Karl Jenkins10:21

Sadly, in relation to to today, sadly, but at that time all children could learn a musical instrument for free. Excellent school orchestra, from which I graduated to Camorgan Youth Orchestra and then the National Youth Orchestra of Wales. So that's a progression that many children made and um you know those days um much uh the fact that they've gone is quite sad really.

Presenter10:42

You started on the piano then, as you said, went on to the oboe. Was that how you got your oboe through that scheme?

Karl Jenkins10:48

Yes, it was through that kind of scheme where the instrument is is given to one. You know, thankfully it it was there for me and many, many other young people.

Presenter10:55

So was it clear to you by that stage that your life was going to be in music?

Karl Jenkins10:59

I think so, but I've no idea in which direction. It's only during my teenage years when I found jazz that I had I've kind of a path that I maybe thought I wanted to to go down.

Presenter11:10

And what about composition?

Karl Jenkins11:12

Well, what attracted me to jazz was that jazz occupied a world that was accessible, although maybe it s didn't sound sound like it to many people, but it worked within a tonal framework, it was within keys, where classical composition at that time was very very difficult to listen to.

Presenter11:30

So this is the stockhousings and so on that not everybody finds it.

Karl Jenkins11:33

Well, yes, that that c generally that kind of area, yes. Which didn't appeal to me from a creative point of view as a composer. But jazz did because one could work within what was still a relatively kind of tonal framework.

Karl Jenkins11:45

It was the music there that just captivated me early on.

Presenter11:48

Did you bring jazz records home?

Karl Jenkins11:50

Eventually, yes, once I got into it and learned who the exponents were.

Presenter11:54

Did you play them to your dad?

Karl Jenkins11:55

I did. He was impressed by some of it and not so impressed by others, but he's fairly open-minded.

Presenter12:04

So what's your next piece of music?

Karl Jenkins12:06

For the greatest of all

Karl Jenkins12:07

Jazz bands in my book, Jazz Groups, was the Miles Davis Quintet Sextet of the Sixties, which had great pianist Bill Evans, great saxophone players John Coltrane and Cannibal Adeli. This is an album called Kind of Blue, which is one of the seminal jazz albums. Hugely influential. And I spoke to Bill Evans about this. I met him in Runescots one night when he was playing there and he was

Karl Jenkins12:34

Tell me when they made it, they didn't think it was anything that special. They thought it was good, but not innovative. But um this is blue and green from from that album.

Presenter13:42

Miles Davis and Blue in Green, your third track they're chosen for your enduring love of jazz. So Carl Jenkins, what do you think the job of a composer is?

Karl Jenkins13:53

Communication to a certain extent.

Karl Jenkins13:55

To my mind, it's pointless being an artist if one doesn't have an audience.

Karl Jenkins14:00

And I've been to so many performances of one man and his dog turns up, there's a ripple of applause and the piece is never played again. And that kind of world doesn't interest me because I think you have to make an emotional connection with people and that's where I believe, in my opinion, some contemporary music has lost its way. If you don't engage with people through what you do, um it's a pointless task.

Presenter14:27

In a sense, then, it would seem that it's exposing a view.

Presenter14:30

As much as it tells us something about the audiences and the people who want to go and watch it, it tells us quite a lot about how you are.

Karl Jenkins14:37

Well, I suppose that's true. I suppose but I've been pompous about it, and that's true of any artist, really. What what you

Karl Jenkins14:43

What you present is what you are, so it's honest in in that sense.

Presenter14:47

Are you an emotional person off the score?

Karl Jenkins14:51

Fairly. I'm a kind of uh morose cout, I suppose. Yeah, I think I'm emotional, yes.

Presenter14:59

That's a wonderful description of a morose Kelt. I'm glad you came up with it and not me. How does that manifest itself? Are you a tricky person to live with?

Karl Jenkins15:08

I think so, but most people find me mild-mannered and um laid-back. My wife wouldn't agree. I mean, she's a composer as well. I don't think I'm tricky, but maybe other people do.

Presenter15:16

Yes, tricky people never do think they're tricky, of course.

Speaker 415:18

Ha!

Presenter15:19

Uh w what about the intellectual aspect of composing? Do you think it's important that people's muscle upstairs is exercised when they listen to a piece of music?

Karl Jenkins15:30

Tanissna, you mean?

Presenter15:30

Yes, the listener.

Karl Jenkins15:32

Not necessarily. A lot of the greatest music ever written was written to Commission. Bach wrote cantatas'cause it were needed by the next Sunday. Or he wrote his Brandenburg concertos'cause the Count of wherever wanted them performed at court, similarly Mozart. A whole batch of the greatest music ever written was written to Commission because someone needed it the next week. And you you people go on o about.

Karl Jenkins15:55

Performances of Bach, Brandberg concertas, you know, where there should be one cell or what did Bach m mean, you know, did he mean two or three, whatever, you know. Very often it's what was as a working musician, it's what what was available, or what was if there were money to pay for three, you might have wanted three, you know. These kind of arguments exist. And so I've got a very pragmatic approach to music making in that sense.

Presenter16:19

You yourself then went off to read music at a university in Cardiff. Was this a liberation to go to the the bright lights in the big city?

Karl Jenkins16:26

It was good, and it's uh I'm eternally grateful for having uh had a very academic schooling in in music, studying harmony, counterpoint, fugue, orchestration, history music. So it was a thoroughly academic degree which stood me in good stead really.

Presenter16:42

You did move from Wales to London in the mid-sixties. How much of a cultural awakening was that?

Karl Jenkins16:47

That was a bigger change, and that was quite exciting. And I immediately started playing jazz when I was here.

Presenter16:52

It must have been a very proud moment for your father when you got a place at the Royal Academy.

Karl Jenkins16:55

He was, yes, immensely proud. Yes, indeed.

Karl Jenkins16:59

This was doubly poor to me'cause I don't think I'd have come to London if if that hadn't been there for me to go to. I wa wasn't kind of young man who'd make that step and go to London on

Karl Jenkins17:11

as a speculative kind of um venture, you know.

Presenter17:14

So you'd moved to London then in the mid sixties, the the flowering of flower power and all those things. Did you have a summer of love?

Karl Jenkins17:22

Well the kind of Rock Revolution and all that kind of passed me by really. I was very much into

Presenter17:26

Oh car Uh

Presenter17:28

I'm so disappointed.

Karl Jenkins17:31

So I was kind of around, I was part of it, but I wasn't um

Karl Jenkins17:35

It didn't musically it didn't ma it didn't affect me that much, you know. But it was very much a dual existence, student by day, jazz at night.

Presenter17:42

I'm picturing smoky, boozy basements, long hair, lots of guys together staying up till three in the morning, am I right?

Karl Jenkins17:50

I suppose so, yeah, pretty much.

Presenter17:53

What's your next record?

Karl Jenkins17:54

I've always been a great fan of kind of Steely Dan, which is the other side of not wanted label music again, but it's more in the kind of rock direction and particularly American style. And Donald Haygun's half of Steely Dan and fantastic songwriter and creator. And this is a track, The Goodbye Look, from his album Night Fly.

Speaker 418:14

We got bowling, they're knocking the colonel standing in the sun.

Speaker 418:19

With a stupid face, the glasses and the gun

Speaker 418:24

I know what happened.

Speaker 418:26

I read the book

Speaker 418:29

I believe I just got the fall of love, I believe I just got the

Speaker 418:33

I believe I just got the goodbye. I believe I just got the goodbye.

Speaker 418:40

Nid you pull me a Cuban Reese Greg

Presenter18:45

Donald Fagan and the goodbye look. And you were saying during that, Carl Jenkins, that that reminds you of the sort of soundtrack to your family holidays with your son.

Karl Jenkins18:52

Yes, my son's Jody is uh also a composer. He's twenty five now, but probably he was about five when it was released, and um it's been a soundtrack to our family life really.

Presenter19:02

You had a a very successful time in your twenties with your exploration of jazz, your performance. You were in a band called Nucleus and then in Soft Machine. The performing and the touring. How was that?

Karl Jenkins19:13

That was interesting. It's always good to be part of a band. It's good fun at first. And then being in a such a small knit group, I mean, you know, mo you move on, you kind of get get on each other's nerves after a while and the situation kind of fragments.

Presenter19:30

You were on the road when your father died. What happened?

Karl Jenkins19:34

I was playing this was slightly earlier, I was in the south of France with um playing the En Teepe Jazz Festival with Grim Collier and there's a phone call from the British Consulate. I knew then what it was,'cause my father had had a heart attack the previous year. Um it was just intuition, whatever. I just knew what it was and then the phone call came, we were on the beach and he told me.

Karl Jenkins19:54

Sauliser immediately went back to Wales.

Presenter19:56

Given how close you had been with your father, that must have had a tremendous effect on you.

Karl Jenkins19:59

Yeah, it was quite devastating at the time, yeah.

Presenter20:02

How did you deal with it?

Karl Jenkins20:05

Well, I went back to Wales and you know, sort of the funeral arrangements, those kind of things, what one had to. So I just dealt with it as one would, I suppose, just plow on. I mean, it was easy when I got back to London and started working again. You know, I wouldn't say I f forgot it. I mean, I still dream about it sometimes, but it was easier to manage when I was removed from the kind of Welsh culture around it.

Presenter20:29

You were around about twenty five then when your father died. So of course, as you say, your mother died when you were very young. Your father died when you were twenty five. Was there a sense in which you you felt sort of cut adrift from your your background and your childhood?

Karl Jenkins20:32

That's a fine.

Karl Jenkins20:43

To a certain extent, yes. And I I a major regret in my in my life is that my wife didn't meet my father. Uh, they only kind of missed each other by, I don't know, a couple of years or so.

Karl Jenkins20:55

you know, he died and then I met my wife later, so that's a regret. And also that my son Jody, who never saw my well he w you know, there's no chance he'd have seen my um mother, but you know, not my father as well.

Presenter21:08

What's your next record?

Karl Jenkins21:11

I'd have to take a Mahler Symphony because I think he's an absolute genius. So I've chosen the Adagetto from Mahler's V. During the 1980s there were a whole series of fantastic concerts in London by Klaus Tenstedt and the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall. An amazing Mahler conductor. And I was actually present at this recording. I used to go to them religiously. So this is one I was at.

Presenter22:33

Part of the adagietto from Mahler's Symphony No. Five in C Sharp Minor, played by the London Philharmonic conducted by Klaus Tenstedt.

Presenter22:41

Your performing then, Carl Jenkins, came to an end round about the mid-80s, and you turned you embraced commerce, you decided that you

Karl Jenkins22:48

That you have

Presenter22:49

You were going to move into the area of composition for ad theme tunes and add jingles. Very different from what you've been doing with your your your jazz.

Karl Jenkins22:59

Yes, but because that was purely kind of self-indulgent, the chaz side of things. Improvising for half an hour and that's just one person in the band and then the other one would do the same.

Karl Jenkins23:10

So sometimes they went on, they were interminable, sometimes they kind of improvised jazz evenings, but anyway.

Presenter23:15

And here you were working with these big, nasty ad boys with red braces on, where it was all about the buck, and it was all about you giving something that they could sell to people in thirty seconds.

Presenter23:27

The game.

Karl Jenkins23:27

Uh

Presenter23:27

Uh

Karl Jenkins23:27

Ooh.

Karl Jenkins23:29

Well it went pretty fine really. We won an industry award early on, the second or third job we did, and um D and A D Award for Best Music, and then it's it kind of snowballed, as they say, from there. And we did quite a lot of high profile commercials. Our main work was writing what one would like to think of as creative music and sports for these ads. But that was a it was a important part of the industry at that time.

Presenter23:54

And also you learn, I I would imagine, a sort of subliminal shorthand. I mean, you have to get somewhere in an ad pretty quickly, you know, within thirty or fifty seconds, you have to get the message across. Did did that teach you anything about your own way of composing?

Karl Jenkins24:08

Other than what you just said, it made one learn to be very concise and pithy and make the musical message brief. And initially what was fun eventually became the downside, because I wanted return to more expansive forms.

Presenter24:23

Was there a sense in the background of all of this that you felt that bubbling to the surface was a creativity that needed an outlet, something that actually wanted to run rampant through the music?

Karl Jenkins24:34

Yes, indeed, and that's what eventually happened with the Addie Amos Project, and that I was asked to do a commercial for an airline company. I had this idea of floating around of music based on kind of Western principles, European classical principles, but where the sound is more ethnic, using percussion and ethnic sounding voices with an invented language, singing phonetically, much like jazz cat singing actually, but more organized and you know, written down. So the Addie Amos Project was born, which was fairly successful globally.

Presenter25:05

Fairly successful, is somewhat understating it. We'll talk more about Addie Ames in just a second. What's your sixth record?

Karl Jenkins25:12

Such a large chunk of my life was involved in kind of jazz rock and jazz fusion. But I think one of the best composers in that genre was Georges Avenel and his band called Weather Report. And this is Berdlund. He drew on different cultures, again which I have some kind of empathy with. So this is Berdland from Weather Report.

Presenter26:02

That was Weather Report and Birdland. Let's talk then about Addy Amos, which, as you say, came out in fact of this was a Delta Airlines commercial.

Presenter26:11

Um, it's topped classical and pop charts. I think it's earned you around about seventeen platinum and gold discs. Huge hit all round the world. But it came out of this. How long was the original piece of music?

Karl Jenkins26:22

In its full form it would have been about three minutes, before the addit was a minute.

Karl Jenkins26:26

That was the genesis of it all and then.

Karl Jenkins26:28

We recreated an album around it and composed five or six other pieces in the same style.

Presenter26:33

And because uh it originally came from an advert, do you think that was the seeds of the snobbery against your music? Was that where they began, by by high flying music critics who think you're not quite the thing?

Karl Jenkins26:44

That's possibly true, yes. There was a huge furore about it at the time because it wasn't considered classical music and then the LPO kind of wrote letters and various people wrote letters saying well it came from that source. It was you know, it wouldn't have existed without classical music. So they relented.

Karl Jenkins27:00

I found it all kind of amusing really to a certain extent, but um

Presenter27:03

Just amusing? I mean, given what a thoroughly trained classical musician you were, did you find it just amusing or didn't you find it infuriating as well?

Karl Jenkins27:10

Well, I suppose so, but I I didn't expect anything different really, so so it eventually broke barriers down and it w it was, as you say, it was fairly accepted universally.

Presenter27:21

Was there a moment of epiphany? Did you think this is it? I'm actually going to be able to make my living and make my life as a composer.

Karl Jenkins27:27

I didn't think of it at the time like that, so I suppose I'd found something that created a kind of rapport with people, I suppose, something that reached out. It took off at different times in different territories.

Presenter27:40

You said that you were very big in Germany with Adiemus. You you are, I understand, very big in Kazakhstan.

Karl Jenkins27:47

Yes, I do have a Kazakhstan connection, yes, and I've been there a couple of times, and it's a very interesting country.

Presenter27:51

Are you guys it's a big country, fifty million?

Karl Jenkins27:53

Yeah, that's it.

Presenter27:53

And how do they treat you? I mean, do they give you the national dress to get pressure? Yes, they do.

Karl Jenkins27:57

Yes, they do actually. I've had the twice the old hat and jacket. It's somewhat embarrassing sometimes being dressed up on stage like a wizard. But um

Presenter28:08

And do they have sort of state receptions and banquets like that?

Karl Jenkins28:10

Yeah, occasionally, yeah, yeah. The only thing I don't like about it is, um horse meat and horse milk.

Presenter28:17

Right. Which, as an honoured guest, of course, you will have to consume

Karl Jenkins28:20

Yeah.

Presenter28:22

You do it with a smile on your face.

Karl Jenkins28:23

Yes, absolutely.

Presenter28:25

What's your seventh record?

Karl Jenkins28:28

The seventh is I used to re listen to this programme as a boy when Roy Pomley was to do it, and I remember Elizabeth Schwarzkopf being on and she had eight of her own albums on it, and I always thought it the height of arrogance for anyone in this programme to have their own music, and now I'm going to do exactly that.

Presenter28:46

Just the one. You haven't chosen all eight. What what have you chosen?

Karl Jenkins28:49

It's the Benedictus from the Arman, a Mass for Peace, that was a millennium commission by the Royal Armories. If I were on this island it would remind me of in recording studios in London with orchestras and choirs and my son worked on it and have conducted it a lot, so it would mean something to me.

Presenter29:34

Part of the Benedictus from the Armed Man, a Mass for Peace, played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and composed by my castaway, Carl Jenkins. You're recently back from conducting your requiem in Canada. You are that very rare thing we touched on this at the beginning. You are a living composer who is very successful all around the world. How does it feel when you stand there in a concert hall or a venue and conduct a full orchestra and listen to your own music being played and feel the appreciation of an audience?

Karl Jenkins30:07

Well, it's very gratifying and very humbling as well, because I don't consider myself of um great importance compared to the masters, some of whose music I play today.

Karl Jenkins30:19

I think when you're actually doing it in concert you kind of divorce yourself from the fact that you're written it because there are obviously all kind of technical considerations to consider. So it's not a question of standing there and wallowing in the same kind of the self-gratifying experience. It isn't like that at all. But as I say, it's humbling and and also gratifying when the response is is good.

Presenter30:41

And you continue the tradition. You've mentioned your son a couple of times. Your son is making his life in music. Is that very satisfying as a composer for you?

Karl Jenkins30:48

Yes, he's very he's very talented. He followed my footsteps into um he won a scholarship at the Royal Academy as a percussionist and came out as a composer. So he's twenty five and unlike me he's embraced technology as it as young people do. Well it's been a struggle for me.

Presenter31:04

What do you think your father would make of the I mean, it's incredible range of music that that you've that you've followed and been passionate and successful about in each different area over these last few decades. What do you think your own father would make of that?

Karl Jenkins31:15

I've already been thrilled, uh especially where I've ended up, which is more to where his his heart was musically.

Presenter31:23

You say you don't consider yourself to be among the masters. I mean, where would you place yourself within the the pantheon of composition?

Karl Jenkins31:32

Oh, way down somewhere.

Presenter31:33

Is that is that truthful?

Karl Jenkins31:34

Yes, it is absolutely truthful. Yes.

Presenter31:38

Is that fine by you?

Karl Jenkins31:39

Yes.'Cause I'm doing what I want to do. I'm en enjoying doing it. People like it. I make once again this emotional connection with people. People are moved by what I do. And I like to think what I do has some integrity. So that's fine. That's fine with me.

Presenter31:56

What's your last piece of music?

Karl Jenkins31:58

Um this is the trio from Strauss, Richard Strauss, uh Rosen Cavalier, the trio from the last act. I think it's possibly the most sublime piece of music ever written. Um

Presenter32:10

That's a very good reason.

Karl Jenkins32:10

Good reason. Yes, it is really. And the opera is a favorite of of my wife and my son and uh the family, so that's why I've had it.

Speaker 432:22

One's in front to stay in this way.

Presenter33:19

Kiriti Kanua and Sophie von Otter and Barbara Hendricks singing the final trio from the third act of Strauss's Der Rosen Cavalier with the State Orchestra of Dresden, conducted by Bernard Heitink.

Presenter33:31

So you have the Bible, of course, Carl Jenkins, and you have the complete works of Shakespeare. What would be your third book?

Karl Jenkins33:38

Tell me Michelin guide to France.

Karl Jenkins33:42

It would make me think of the dinners I could be eating or might be able to eat when I get off the island.

Presenter33:49

I was going to say that's a kind of slow torture, but also the optimism of places you might see it in the future. And what would your luxury be?

Karl Jenkins33:52

Yeah.

Karl Jenkins33:54

It was a toss-up between a comb from a moustache or a piano.

Presenter33:59

And what one?

Karl Jenkins34:00

The piano and if I could live underneath it, but maybe I'm not allowed to.

Presenter34:04

You can do what you like with it once it's there.

Karl Jenkins34:05

That once it's there.

Presenter34:07

Almost an impossible question for a composer to answer, but given that you managed to narrow it down to eight, what would be the one record that you would run to save if the waves came to sweep them away?

Karl Jenkins34:16

Probably if if I if I were if I had to take one, I'd probably take The Ring by Wagner, which I haven't included here, because I don't have twenty-four hours' worth of music. But with what we have here, I'd take definitely take the last one, Richard Strauss.

Presenter34:29

Carl Jenkins, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Karl Jenkins34:32

My pleasure, thank you.

Presenter34:40

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.

Speaker 435:30

Uh