Album: Karl Jenkins, The Peacemakers (EMI Classics)

I've enjoyed some of Karl Jenkins's work, but this is fairly unbearable: based on texts from "peacemakers", it ends up as an all-encompassing assemblage of white-hatted do-gooders rather than a coherent piece.

Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King, fine; but Anne Frank? Mother Theresa? Shelley? The lack of development is crippling – one section simply features the word "peace" in 20 tongues. Jenkins blends in multi-cultural flavours alongside the orchestra and 1000-voice choir; but while the interplay of violin and soprano sax on "He Had a Dream" recalls Astral Weeks, elsewhere the sax tends more towards Kenny G territory, a characteristic more likely to infuriate than pacify.

DOWNLOAD THIS He Had A Dream; Intermezzo – Solitude