Post by Martin on Oct 19, 2008 9:21:59 GMT
Katherine Jenkins has left Universal Classics & Jazz to join Warner Music in a bid to break into the American market and gets a massive new contract. Here are the details:
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/3215861/Singer-Katherine-Jenkins-agrees-10million-record-deal-to-break-America.html
Martin
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/3215861/Singer-Katherine-Jenkins-agrees-10million-record-deal-to-break-America.html
| Singer Katherine Jenkins agrees $10million record deal to break America Katherine Jenkins, the Welsh opera star and British forces sweetheart, has signed the biggest classical recording deal in history, The Daily Telegraph can reveal. By Christopher Hope, Home Affairs Editor Miss Jenkins, 28, who has sold more than two million albums in the UK alone, is leaving her record label Universal Classics & Jazz and joining Warner Music in a bid to break into the American market. The mezzo-soprano has signed a $10million (£5.8million), five-album deal which will see her move to Los Angeles in the New Year. Music industry sources said it is the biggest in classical music history. The new contract dwarfs the £1million six-album deal she originally signed with Universal when she was an unknown in 2000. In America she will be working with opera star Placido Domingo and David Foster, the producer behind Canadian jazz singer Michael Buble and Josh Groban, the Grammy-nominated American singer-songwriter. Miss Jenkins' final album with Universal, called Sacred Arias, is due to be released on Monday and is almost certain to make it into the top 10 in the British charts. In an interview earlier this month, Miss Jenkins said she wanted to make an album aimed at an American audience. She said: "I've not done a lot there yet as I've focused on other areas". She said Placido Domingo was "a great person to learn from", adding: "He thinks he can help me and give me advice. I don't know the American market so I need to take advice". Universal, the record label which first signed her, said it wished her well in her new deal. A spokesman said: "We are proud to have helped Katherine develop such a successful career, and her new album of Sacred Arias is her best yet - it is set to be her fifth consecutive classical number one. "We wish her well, and we hope that her new company will be as committed to her as Universal has been over the last six years." Miss Jenkins, who says on her website that she tries to emulate both Marilyn Monroe and Madonna, is one of the most successful British female soloists in history, with her last album Rejoice selling 500,000 copies. Her albums feature arias, popular songs - some sung in Italian - as well as traditional hymns and classical crossover music. She says on her website: "I do not understand where the idea came from that opera is only for privileged people, I am as happy singing before 70,000 people at the Millennium Stadium, as I am in front of a few hundred in a small concert hall" Her first album 'Premiere' was the fastest selling classical CD of all time, selling over 30,000 copies in the first week. She is also the only singer in musical history to hold simultaneously the numbers one, two and three positions in the classical charts which she did with her three albums - Premiere, Second Nature and Living A Dream - in 2005. Miss Jenkins has also tried to emulate the role of Dame Vera Lynn as the forces' sweetheart. She sang at the VE Day celebrations in 2005 and regularly risks her life to entertain troops in Afganistan and Iraq. In that year her helicopter was targeted by a ground-to-air missile when she was in Iraq and had to make a sudden drop from 2,000 feet to 500 feet. But she has not been without her critics. Earlier this year the New Zealand opera star Dame Kiri Te Kanawa criticised her and other young popular classical music stars as "fake singers". Miss Jenkins was born in Neath, south Wales, and started to sing when she was just four in her local church choir where her mother ran a Sunday school. Her late father Selwyn, a retired factory worker, drove Katherine and her younger sister Laura to music lessons and choir practice. He later encouraged Katherine to take part in singing competitions. She once shattered a chandelier while singing "O Holy Night" at Swansea's Brangwyn Hall. She said: "When I hit a high 'A' there was this loud crack, like a gun going off," she said. "and then all this glass started falling on me." She became a music teacher, worked as a guide on the London Eye and earned some extra money as a model. In 2003 she was called in by Universal for an audition. An hour after hearing her sing, the company offered her the six album record deal. Sacred Arias is the final record in this deal. A spokesman for Warner Music declined to comment. |
Martin
