The extraordinarily diverse output of composer Karl Jenkins has encompassed genres as numerous as jazz, rock, film music, advertising music, New Age music, and classical composition, largely choral. He is perhaps best known for the song Adiemus, for a series of classical or New Age works derived from it, and for the widely performed mass setting The Armed Man.

Jenkins was born in Penclawdd, Swansea, Wales, on February 17, 1944. His father was a local schoolteacher, organist, and choir director who gave him his first music lessons. Jenkins attended Cardiff University, studying music, and went on for further work at the Royal Academy of Music. He later earned a doctorate in music from the University of Wales. In the late '60s, Jenkins became interested in London's vigorous jazz scene, playing saxophones, keyboards, and, more unusually, oboe. He performed with a band led by bassist Graham Collier and founded the jazz fusion band Nucleus, which performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1970. In 1972, Jenkins joined the progressive rock band Soft Machine, composing many of the songs on their successful albums of the '70s and early '80s.

In the '80s and '90s, Jenkins enjoyed a successful career as a composer of music for advertising, winning two industry awards. Some of his advertising music later found its way into his classical compositions. The most significant example of this was his song Adiemus, which was sung by Miriam Stockley and first appeared in 1994 in a Delta Airlines ad. The song was a hit in its own right, and the material (later simply the concept) continued its life through five extraordinarily successful Adiemus albums (Songs of Sanctuary, Cantata Mundi, Dances of Time, The Eternal Knot, and Vocalise). These albums have been categorized as New Age or classical; they incorporate various influences from Celtic music, world music, electronic music, and more into a basic theme. Just as successful has been The Armed Man (1999), a setting of the Catholic mass incorporating the medieval song The Armed Man (L'homme armé) along with other texts and musical materials. The mass has been performed by hundreds of choirs, many of them nonprofessional, in Britain and beyond. The Armed Man featured a 70-piece orchestra, and in the 21st century, Jenkins has focused on yet larger classical works. The giant choral work The Peacemakers (2014), with texts from Martin Luther King, Jr., the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Anne Frank, included a 1,000-voice choir called The Really Big Chorus on its 2012 debut recording. Jenkins' 2016 work Cantata Memoria: For the Children commemorated the victims of the Aberfan Disaster, a mine waste collapse in Wales that killed 116 children.

Jenkins has remained active into his seventies and continues to issue albums, mostly under his own name. In 2019, the album Miserere: Songs of Mercy and Redemption appeared on the Decca label; that year also saw the release of Karl Jenkins: Piano, featuring the composer's performances of his relatively underexposed piano music. He returned in 2023 with the album One World, commissioned by World Choir for Peace director Nicol Matt. ~ James Manheim

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) has held a prominent place in British music-making for more than seven decades. With a wide reach across Britain, in addition to its regular concerts in London's Cadogan Hall, including concerts in places where access to orchestral music is limited, the RPO can lay claim to the title of Britain's national orchestra. The RPO incorporates the pops-oriented Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, the avant-garde Sharp Edge group, and RPO Resound, a community and educational outreach program.

The RPO's broad contemporary appeal, which has included appearances with popular music stars and on film, television, and video game soundtracks, would have been lauded by its founder and first conductor, Sir Thomas Beecham, who set up the RPO in 1946 and helped lead a vital revival in the U.K.'s orchestral life after World War II. The new orchestra prospered, beginning a long summer residency at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera in 1948 and touring the U.S. in 1950, becoming the first English orchestra to do so since 1912. Rudolf Kempe became principal conductor upon Beecham's death in 1961. The orchestra hit a rough patch in the early '60s under the leadership of Beecham's widow; Kempe departed (and then returned), and the orchestra temporarily lost the right to use the "royal" designation. That was restored by Queen Elizabeth II in 1966, and several strong conductors, Antal Doráti (1975-1978), André Previn (1985-1992), and Vladimir Ashkenazy (music director, 1987-1994), built the orchestra artistically. Later conductors have included Daniele Gatti, Yuri Temirkanov, Charles Dutoit, and Vasily Petrenko, who began his tenure as music director in 2021.

The RPO is especially notable for the depth and variety of its recording program, which in the first few years of its existence had already topped 100 items; by the early 2020s decade, the orchestra had issued many hundreds of recordings, stretching from pop (disco enthusiasts will remember it as the orchestra featured on the Hooked on Classics recordings of the 1980s) to new avant-garde music. Among these was a 125-album contract with the Tring label. The orchestra's RPO Records, formed in 1986, is thought to have been the first recording label owned by a symphony orchestra; such an arrangement is now commonplace. The following year, the RPO launched the light music (or pops in the U.S.) companion group, the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra.

In 1993, the RPO inaugurated an educational and community outreach program titled RPO Resound. This program provides musical experiences outside of traditional concert settings, such as schools, prisons, and hospitals. Among the key projects for this program is the stroke rehabilitation project STROKESTRA. The RPO is the resident music ensemble of Cadogan Hall in Chelsea, becoming the first London orchestra to have a permanent home, giving its first concert there in 2004. In 2019, the RPO released Animal Requiem by rocker Pete Townshend's collaborator and marital partner, Rachel Fuller. That year, the RPO was named the associate orchestra of the Royal Albert Hall. Among the orchestra's 2022 albums are a recording of two Sibelius Symphonies and Air, featuring the music of Oliver Davis. The next year, they teamed with Joe Hisaishi for A Symphonic Celebration, which reimagined songs from beloved Studio Ghibli animated films. ~ James Manheim & Keith Finke

Saxophone prodigy Jess Gillam's story is a litany of firsts: she was the first saxophonist to reach the final of BBC Young Musician of the Year; the youngest-ever female performer at the Last Night of the Proms; the first saxophonist to sign to Decca Classics; and her first album, Rise, debuted at number one on the U.K. classical chart, when she was just 20 years old.

Born on May 24, 1998, Gillam was brought up in a music-loving family in the picturesque market town of Ulverston in Cumbria, in England's Lake District. Her family ran a tearoom, where she sometimes waitressed as a child. Gillam began to play saxophone at age seven, initially in a samba-inspired carnival band. She discovered classical music at age 11 when she saw a saxophone quartet play, and, amazed at the instrument's range, determined that she would pursue it. After she took lessons at a local high school, her raw talent saw her accepted into the Junior Royal Northern College of Music when she was 13. Three years later, she began studies with John Harle, who became her mentor.

In 2016, Gillam's big break came when she reached the final of the prestigious BBC Young Musician of the Year competition, becoming the first saxophonist ever to do so and the first to win the woodwind category. From then on, things started to happen rapidly: she made her Proms debut in 2017, played the Last Night in 2018, and performed at the BAFTAs in 2019. Her youth, fresh outlook, and funky dress sense seemed to see her positioned as a sort of 21st century answer to violinist Nigel Kennedy, who had shaken up the fusty classical world in the '80s with his punkish hair and loud suits.

Her debut album, Rise, issued by Decca in 2019, featured a selection of classical repertoire, film score pieces, and pop transcriptions, and went immediately to the top of the U.K. classical chart. In addition to performing, Gillam was also a teacher and a vocal activist against government cuts to music tuition. From the age of 12, she organized her own concert series in her hometown, which attracted international stars like Snake Davis, Courtney Pine, and Tommy Smith. Following the release of her album, it was announced that Gillam would become the youngest-ever presenter on the classical-oriented BBC Radio 3, as it attempted to capitalize on its growing youth listenership. ~ John D. Buchanan