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Top 10 for Dec

Karl Jenkins: motets - Polyphony / WQXR 'Album Of the Week'

The career of Welsh composer Karl Jenkins is something of a paradox: he's been hugely successful around the globe, having amassed 17 gold and platinum albums and been featured in TV commercials for British Airways and De Beers. His choral work The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace has been performed nearly 2,000 times in approximately 30 countries. Yet, even as he turned 70 in February, many classical music listeners don't seem to know who he is. This release, featuring the English choir Polyphony, offers a fine introduction, featuring choral adaptations of Jenkins's previous hit compositions. They include three pieces taken from The Armed Man (commissioned England's Royal Armouries Museum); Pie Jesu and In paradisum, from his Requiem; and Exsultate jubilate, based on Palladio the neo-Baroque piece made famous in the De Beers ad. 

Karl Jenkins: motets - Polyphony is the WQXR -  New York: 'Album Of the Week'