Karen Geoghegan

Karen Geoghegan

Ask the most informed classical music lover to name a famous bassoonist and chances are they'll be stumped. The most neglected of woodwind instruments, the bassoon has barely registered as a solo instrument despite being a stalwart of the classical orchestra for more than 200 years.

For a masterpiece of musical engineering, the humble bassoon has been stereotyped as either depressingly tragic (think Tchaikovsky's Sixth symphony) or ridiculously comic (all farts and belches). There's an unfortunate irony that the greatest musical satirist of the age - PDQ Bach aka Peter Schickele - just happens to be an accomplished bassoonist.

But, at its best, the bassoon can be one of the most gloriously rich and raw, pleasing and plangent of instruments. And it's this emotional versatility and flexibility that Karen Geoghegan is determined to champion, aided and abetted by one of the UK's top independent record labels.

'There's no way I would be getting a solo recording now if it hadn't been for the show'

Carving out a career as a solo bassoonist is going to be no small task but the 19-year-old Scot has had a useful headstart in the career stakes. She was runner-up in the BBC reality show Classical Star last year, behind fellow Royal Academy of Music (RAM) student Sophie Cashell, another recent Muso cover artist.Geoghegan (it's pronounced 'Gay-gunn' in case you're wondering) didn't have the easiest of televisual journeys. In fact, more than a million viewers saw her get a critical mauling from the judges in the first week - and saw her contemplate turning her back on the show altogether.

Geoghegan is sanguine about the show and recognises that 'it had its problems'. 'There were some things I felt were a bit too "staged",' she admits, 'like sending us to a bar to play for a bunch of people who couldn't be bothered to listen to us. But I knew there could be such a great ending to it all that it was too good an opportunity to turn down. And, as the competition progressed, the challenges seemed to get more musically related.

'People did have their problems with the programme,' she acknowledges, 'and of course this sort of thing has its downside but it was great exposure, no matter what anyone says. I've had people recognise me - I was walking past Baker Street tube station the other week when two people shouted from their car asking if I was the bassoonist from the TV. Look at what I've got out of it,' Geoghegan continues. 'There's no way I would be getting a solo recording now if it hadn't been for the show.'

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