Bridgnorth composer's music to be performed at cathedral
A composer from Bridgnorth will have her music performed at a top UK cathedral as part of a special project helping youngsters into music.
Karen Kirkland's A Peace Blessing will be sung at Belfast Cathedral on May 15 during the city's Primary School Choir of the Year competition.
The musician's piece will be performed by all the children during the interval, while judges are totting up the scores after each school's choirs have sung individually. Funds raised from the competition will go to the St Anne's Trust, which provides a musical outreach project for primary schools and children in deprived areas of the city.
It comes after Karen's piece was performed en masse at Symphony Hall, Birmingham, last September, as part of a World Peace Day project called One Day One Choir.
Watch the Birmingham performance here:
Karen, who teaches with Shropshire Music Service, won't be in attendance at Belfast, but rates having her music performed there highly among her achievements.
She said: "It is right up there. I'm not going to be able to go. I'll be working unfortunately. I work for Shropshire Music Service. I'm a woodwind specialist but I teach everything."
She also teaches orchestras Bridgnorth Stompers and the Ludlow Stompers.
Karen added: "It's very exciting and a bit surreal really. I write my music in my spare bedroom in my home in Bridgnorth, and to think it will be played at these great venues is amazing.
"I play in a brass band and we played a piece called the Gaelic Blessing. The conductor read out the words to us and I thought, that sounds good. I looked into it and found out there was an English, a Welsh and a Scottish version. I wanted to write my own version.
"I initially wrote it as a four-vocal choir piece, and then it was used for the peace project One Day One Choir which was a project that brings choirs together from across the world for World Peace Day."
