Karen Marshalsay presented by Red Door

Karen Marshalsay is a master of traditional Scottish harp music and is one of very few players who specialise on all three Scottish harps. The gut-strung small harp that is familiar to folk music audiences, the wire-strung harp from the Gaelic tradition and the baroque bray harp with its buzzing sitar effect all feature in Karen’s concerts.

Career highlights include appearing at the Edinburgh International Festival, Celtic Connections, and the Australian National Folk Festival, working with African, Indian and Paraguayan musicians and on multi-cultural projects including Yatra, which premiered at the Edinburgh Mela in 2008.

With a particular interest in pipe music, Karen has played with piping master Allan MacDonald in his acclaimed pibroch concerts, including the Edinburgh International Festival’s From Battle Lines to Bar Lines series (2004), for the National Piping Centre’s 2013 Ceòl na Piòba concert and more recently at a special St Andrew’s Day 2023 concert in St Cecilia’s Hall in Edinburgh.

As a composer, Karen has produced new works for Celtic Connections’ New Voices series, Hands up for Trad’s Distil showcase concerts, and Drake Music Scotland, and she was Composer in Residence with Harps North West in 2016. In 2018 and 2019 she guested with the acclaimed Russian String Orchestra, conducted by Misha Rachlevsky, playing orchestrations of her own compositions. Her solo album, The Road to Kennacraig, released in July 2019, shows her to be a fine composer of tunes in a living tradition and her music has been published in The Dynamic Scottish Harper’s Companion as well as her own collections.

Karen has also worked with the legendary Irish flute player, singer and Boys of the Lough founder, Cathal McConnell’s trio and is currently a member of the long-established Scottish group The Whistlebinkies, who were the first ensemble to combine the Celtic harp, fiddle and pipes in regular performances.

Her Three Scottish Harps concerts actually feature four harps and are full of entertaining musical insights, with stories behind the harps and the tunes’ origins taking audiences into the timeless world of Scotland’s ancient instrument.

Doors Open 7.30pm. Please BYOB!