Classy Galway quartet reaching for stars with Clifden concert

Along with Gina Maria McGuinnes on violin, Aoife Burke on cello and Daniel Bodwell on double bass, Karen will be reaching for the stars on September 24 at Clifden Arts Festival when Elevation premiere a multimedia show, 'The Pale Blue Dot', based on a key moment in space exploration.

It celebrates the Golden Record which travelled on the 1977 Voyager space mission and was a recording that carried messages from human beings to the cosmos. There was music, natural sounds and various greetings, so that any interstellar creature who encountered it would have had a snapshot of life on this planet at that time. That space mission is now billions of miles from home, still with the human 'message in a bottle' onboard.

Karen got the idea to revisit the Golden Record after a Dark Sky event in Mayo in 2024 when she met astronomer Brendan Owens. They discussed astronomy and music, and how both are defined by mathematics.

Shortly after, Karen thought, ‘let’s do something based in music that speaks to the beauty and awe that astronomy gives to us all’.

Her own musical voyage began in 1981, when her family moved from Ballinasloe to New Inn.

Originally from Ballinakill, her father, John, who worked with Teagasc, had played with the famous céilí band there, while Karen’s mother, Mary Petit from Glenamaddy, had learned music at secondary school and could hold a tune on piano, .

“But it wasn’t inevitable,” says Karen of her own career path. The appointment of a new principal to the local school played a role. Tomás McLochlainn, from Moycullen and his wife Máire, from Cork, also moved to New Inn in the early 1980s for Tom’s new job. A musician, composer and teacher, Máire set up the organisation, Music Matters.

Karen and her siblings went to Máire for lessons. Again, fate intervened. Mary proposed that Karen should learn violin, but, as her teacher, Máire proposed viola.

“There is no way I’d have had the opportunity to go down that [musical] path without Máire,” says Karen who now teaches with Music Matters. “Not just the instrument, but the community she built.”

Both were crucial to Karen’s future – with the viola having an advantage over the violin.

“There are more opportunities with viola because there are less of you,” she says, explaining that the instruments “are very interchangeable, but you read a different clef”.

When Karen was 11, she successfully auditioned for the National Youth Orchestra, encouraged by Máire.

“I wouldn’t have got a place if I played violin,” Karen remarks.

In the NYO, performing alongside some of the country’s finest young viola players, she reached a decision: ‘I want to be as good as the best.’

Hard work paid off. A few years later, thinking she might be good enough to play professionally, she attended UCC, studying Music and English for her BA, then doing a Master’s in UL. Moving to Dublin, Karen built her career steadily, sticking with music through thick and thin.

There were tough times, she says, especially during the Celtic Tiger crash which “brought down the floor for the classical music community”.

Three years ago, she and her husband moved back to New Inn.

“It was the quality of life,” she says of their decision. “The pace in Dublin is exhausting and it’s a different city to the place I moved to 23 years ago. There’s a harder edge to it.

“I knew what life was like here, that I could move back and where I fitted in.”

Karen was aware that Aoife Barry, who is originally from Cork, as well as Gina Maria McGuinness from Dublin and US-born Dan had already moved here from Dublin, all for the same reason as she did.

She saw an opportunity to join forces with these “three fantastic musicians”, creating work in the West, rather than having to travel to Dublin constantly, which is the norm for classical musicians.

“To build something to allow us to work where we live and to develop the musical ecosystem by building on what’s there,” was her aim.

That’s what’s they’ll be doing in Clifden on September 24, when the quartet premiere ‘The Pale Blue Dot’.

Combining music, visuals and an overview of how space exploration has developed in the past 50 years, the multimedia concert looks back to the iconic Golden Record and reimagines its message.

At its heart are two new pieces by Irish composers Linda Buckley and Jonathan Nangle. These respond to the message sent to outer space, which included rainfall, birdsong and greetings in many languages. The composers were also inspired by the music selected for the Golden Record, which ranges from Beethoven to Chuck Berry, with folk music from around the world.

Elevation commissioned Linda and Jonathan to compose new pieces, after successfully applying to the Arts Council for funding.

Karen describes their work as “hugely accessible”, saying “people hearing them will imagine and feel what the composers were thinking about” in relation to Voyager and its message.

Elevation also commissioned Salthill-based artist Manuela Corbari to create visuals to accompany the music. And the quartet will play short extracts from the original record, “presenting these to the audience in a new way”.

In addition, astronomer Brendan Owens, now retired from London’s Royal Observatory, will present short video pieces explaining “what happened in 1977, when the Voyager crafts were launched and what we’ve learned since”.

For Karen, this event is about “bringing it back to where we are now” as humans.

“If we were devising a Golden Record now, it would it be so different.”

She’s thrilled that 'The Blue Dot' will also be performed in Galway City and other venues on the west coast before the end of the year, with plans to tour it elsewhere next year, for Voyager’s 50th anniversary.

But first up is Clifden where the festival’s support was key to realising the commission and its evolution. She’s also excited about a project that Elevation will be doing with students in Clifden Community School, exploring what they’d include in a contemporary space capsule.

The results of that will be exhibited in the Station House Theatre at the concert, at 4pm on Thursday, September 24. Tickets at caf.ie.