Jenkins: One World

Sir Karl Jenkins is one of the world's most-performed living composers. The album presents One World, commissioned by the World Choir for Peace and the World Orchestra for Peace.

The choir is joined in this new recording by the World Orchestra for Peace, co-founded by Sir Georg Solti and Charles Kaye in 1995 to reaffirm "the unique strength of music as an ambassador for peace". These illustrious ensembles are joined for two movements by the Stay At Home Choir, a global choral community formed in the UK during the first Covid-19 lockdown to bring singers together, digitally, during a time of isolation.

The music is scored in Karl's inimitable style that resists categorisation. To create this vision, he takes inspiration from texts as diverse as the Bible, the Hindu Gayatri Mantra, the poetry of the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, African American abolitionist, and suffragist poet Frances Harper (c.1850) and Lebanese American writer, poet and artist Khalil Gibran.

As in many of Sir Karl's works, Carol Barratt, contributes some telling text and various adaptations. The combined orchestral and choral forces, with baritone Roderick Williams OBE, soprano Lucy Crowe and mezzo Kathryn Rudge as soloists, are conducted by Sir Karl Jenkins, in collaboration with Artistic Director of the World Choir for Peace, Nicol Matt.