Early life
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Katherine Maria Jenkins is a Wels songwriter and a lyric mezzo-soprano singer. She was born on 29 June 1980 in Neath, Wales and she has a sister. She attended Alderman Davies Church in Wales Primary School in her hometown and between 1991 and 1996, she was a member of the Royal School of Church Music cathedral Singers and got St. Cecilia Award, that is the highest RSCM for female choristers. She came into public attention in 2003, when she sang in honour of Pope John Paul II’s silver jubilee at Westminster Cathedral.
A successful career
From a total of seven albums, six of them reached number one in the UK classical charts between 2004-2008. She managed to become the first singer that reached two number one albums in the same year. In 2005, after she released her third album, she held the top three positions in the classical crossover music chart. She repeated the success of her third album with her Living a Dream album and she won for the second time the classical BRIT award for Album of the Year. In 2008 Katherine Jenkins released her last album with Universal Music, Sacred Arias. Also in 2008 she signed up with Warner Music. In October 2009 she released the album Believe, and this featured Andrea Bocelli and other musicians as Andre Rieu and Chris Botti. At the beginning of 2009, she performed with Placido Domingo in South Corea, and before that she performed with him twice, in 2008 in Hong Kong and in 2007 in Athens. In May 2009 they again sang together at The Classical Brit Awards. In May 2010 she went in Argentina and she sang Parla Piu Piano in the Argentinian show Susana Gimenez. After she moved to Decca Records, she released, in 2014, Home Sweet Home. Katherine Jenkins performed in many places, such as at the opening ceremony of the Ashes Test Series between England and Australia, at Sophia Gardens cricket ground in Cardiff, in Hyde Park for Proms in the Park, at the memorial service for Sir Bobby Robson. She performed with cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, with Andrea Boceli on his PBS Christmas Special. This duet appears in his album, My Christmas. In March and April 2013 Jenkins went on tour with Il Divo in their first European tour. In 2017 she starred at the English National Opera as romantic lead Julie Jordan in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, directed by Lonny Price.
Dancing with the Stars
Jenkins participated at the 14th season of the show and she demonstrated that she is a very good dancer. Whether it was Foxtrot, salsa or waltz, she did great. In the semi-final she got an injury in her back, but it didn’t stop her to dance in the final, along with Donald Driver and William Levy. She got perfect score 30 out of 30 for all three dances and she finished as a runner-up to Driver. Her performance average was 27,9, the third highest in the show’s history at the time.
Last Modified: Mar 6, 2020
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