Jenkins' Gloria premiere at Albert Hall

Karl Jenkins’ new choral work Gloria will be premiered at the Royal Albert Hall on 11 July and a CD of the performance released on the night.

It will be the first time a world premiere has been recorded live and the recording sold immediately following the performance.

The Really Big Chorus, English Festival Orchestra and student vocal soloists conducted by Brian Kay will premiere Gloria and the recording, on Abbey Road Live, will be for sale on the night of the concert only, exclusively to the performers and audience.

On 12 July, the day after the premiere, EMI Classics will release a studio recording of Gloria, paired with Jenkins’ Te Deum, with Jenkins himself conducting the National Youth Chorus of Great Britain, the London Symphony Orchestra and soprano Hayley Westenra.

Hayley Westenra’s debut album Pure featured Jenkins’ Benedictus. She comments on the forthcoming release: “Karl's work is so rewarding to sing as he writes such dynamic and beautiful melodies for the voice, and I jumped at the chance to not only perform his music again, but to actually record his Gloria with Karl himself directing."

Jenkins’ five-movement work Gloria takes as its main text the Latin version of the hymn of praise to God from the traditional Christian Mass, whose first line is 'Gloria in excelsis Deo' (Glory to God in the Highest). Jenkins has also included other passages from the Bible, and in between movements he has “selected readings from various ancient religions, each expressing their own concept of the divine or a deity. The detachment of Buddhism, and the paradoxes of Taoism are both alternative ways of perceiving ultimate reality, and they therefore stand as a kind of counterpoint to the Abrahamic religions”.

Read more about the concert at the Royal Albert Hall and buy tickets.