STAR Sponsors The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace In Barcelona

Online, May 25, 2011 (Newswire.com) - On 4 June 2011, there will be a very special showing of Karl Jenkin's work, The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace, in the Basílica de Santa María del Mar in Barcelona. The première of this work in Barcelona is the result of collaboration between the Coral Carmina in Barcelona and the Chor Audite Nova from Zug in Switzerland.

The Armed Man opened in the Royal Albert Hall in London in 2000 and has since become one of the most successful contemporary choral works. Commissioned by the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds (UK) to celebrate the new millennium, it is a powerful explanation of the terrible consequences of war and is dedicated to the victims of the war in Kosovo. Based on a 15th century French song L'homme arme (The armed man), it includes sacred and secular texts from Tennyson, Kipling, the Koran and the Hindu Mahabharata; all of which have been incorporated into the structure of a Christian Mass. Three languages are sung throughout the Mass: English, French and Latin.

During the early part of his career, the Welsh composer Karl Jenkins was known as a jazz and rock musician. He was first of all a member of the group Nucleus and later formed part of Soft Machine, the progressive rock, psychedelic and fusion jazz group formed in Canterbury (the name was inspired by the William Burroughs novel). He later gained international fame for his collection of compositions which shun strict musical boundaries. For his most famous project, "Adiemus: Songs of Sanctuary", Jenkins invented his own untranslatable language comprising phonetic syllables in which the language is carefully styled to not distract the listener's attention from the pitch and tone of the voice; syllables that end in a consonant are unusual and the voice functions as a simple musical instrument.