Search Results for 'Poet Laureate'

The composer Karl Jenkins is the bane of many music critics’ lives. They cannot understand him; or why he is so popular with serious music lovers. A recent study shows that he is now the most performed living composer in the world. If Jenkins was a Mick Jagger or a Paul McCartney then, some critics argue, different criteria would apply. But this man takes the most solemn themes, such as the Mass, and more recently Stabat Mater (the intensely moving 13th century hymn to Mary as she stands at the foot of the Cross), and presents them in an astonishing, and exciting, new format that makes you sit up, and ask: “What was that?” It is certainly not in the classical tradition.