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Karen is a professional harp player specialising in the traditional music of both Scotland and Latin America, and is one of the few people utilising a fingernail technique on gut, nylon and wire-strung harps. Her playing has developed through the folk world of feisean, festivals, workshops and instruction from such leading players as Alison Kinnaird and Bill Taylor (Scottish), and Bill Morgan and Rito Pederson (Latin American).
As a performer and composer Karen's credits include Celtic Connections, Edinburgh International Festival, Edinburgh Harp Festival, and various other festivals and folk events at home and abroad such as the National Australian Folk Festival, Port Fairy, St Chartier, and the Virginia Scottish Games. Her commissioned pieces for Celtic Connections New Voices series, Journeying, Promises to Keep and The Neo Gosteg, were performed in 1999 and 2000. Ida y Vuelta, a new piece for solo harp, was commissioned by the Northborough Harp Festival and premiered there in September 2001.
Karen has a wide musical background including theatre work with Theatre Highland and Clyde Unity, collaborations with kora player Seiko Susso and traditional Ghanaian drumming band Kakatsitsi, work with harper and storyteller Heather Yule, and with fiddler Iain Fraser. An experienced tutor, she has given workshops at many festivals, and spent a year as Musical Director to all female drumming band SheBoom. Before starting at the RSAMD she was a regular tutor for South Lanarkshire's Council Traditional Music Project, Balnain House and Gordonstoun School. Karen has also taught at the Edinburgh Harp Festival, Sabhal Mór Ostaig and the Centre for Excellence in Traditional Music at Plockton High School.
Karen holds an MA in English and Drama and a PhD on the attempts to found a Scottish National Theatre, 1913-1934, (the Scottish National Players), both from the University of Glasgow. As an arts researcher and writer she has worked for TAG Theatre Company (writing study notes for Sunset Song) and designed an exhibition on popular theatre for the Hunterian Museum and wrote the accompanying book The Waggle o' the Kilt. She also spent a year as Field Officer for the Gaelic Books Council, and a year travelling and performing in Australia.
E-mail Karen Marshalsay at k.marshalsay@rsamd.ac.uk
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