Long before YouTube and Spotify, a generation of diehard music fans tuned Into Young Talent Time weekly to watch their favourite singing stars perform the latest hits on Australia’s cult music show, Young Talent Time.
Few will forget everyone’s favourite Karen Knowles who brightened screens as her liquid voice and dimpled smile beamed into lounge rooms every weekend.
For those not aware, this charming ageless star has spent her life since then entertaining audiences across the world joining other household names on stage in musicals, festivals and wowing new new fans with her appealing talent.
South East Queensland is now home to singer-songwriter Karen, who lives and enjoys a simpler life in the Sunshine Coast hinterland and audiences will be thrilled to know she is performing on Friday 1 August at the Majestic Theatre Pomona from 7 to 9 pm and all are welcome.
For this one night only event in Pomona, Karen will be joined by her pianist Natasha Koch and the wonderful instrumentalist and harmonica player Justin Brady as her special guest.
Justin is most well known for being a significant band member in the ARIA years winning band Things of Stone and Wood and has collaborated with Karen for many years.
The show will celebrate music by iconic Australian artists such as Judith Durham and The Seekers, Olivia Newton John, Archie Roach, John Farnham and Icehouse.
Karen will also perform some of her own original works and songs from her childhood including her days on Young Talent Time. Audiences can expect to hear original songs Karen hasn’t sung on stage before plus seminal Aussie ‘anthems’ such as Great Southern Land and A Touch of Paradise.
Karen went overseas after she finished at YTT where she was mainly songwriting and returned to Australia in 1988 when she performed as the lead female of Big River across Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide.
She appearing alongside Cameron Daddo in this musical adaptation of Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn featuring a bluegrass and country music score by Roger Miller which premiered at Sydney’s Her Majesty’s Theatre.
Another of her exciting roles was as the lead singer of the Seekers which she enjoyed for a few years which included tours across Australia and overseas replacing the mighty Judith Durham with grace and aplomb.
Karen has had a wonderful long career and said: “I always wanted to sing but I didn’t like the celebrity stuff much, to be honest. I liked to keep it real and my parents were very good at grounding me.“
“I think it was only really because of Ron Tudor who was the judge on YTT signing me to a record contract that I started to move into an adult career.
“I always say, wonderful grounding, wonderful training, wonderful experience and recognition and that was the springboard for the recording and the performing and all that that’s happened ever since.
“It’s harder for kids now as people got to know us as we grew up over such a long period, six years, like we pretty much grew up on television. So it’s very unusual. There’s nothing really like that. The Mickey Mouse Club in America was a bit like that in those days but the competitive style of some of the reality TV shows is so different to the nurturing style of what we had.
“The show had very good producers too. I have to give John (Johnny Young) credit because he was an amazing pop singer at the time and he had an amazing career at that stage. And you know, they (The TV producers) said, oh, we’ve got a spot to fill. Could you come up with something? You know, he just came up with this show within a couple of weeks.
“It was a very beautiful thing, the people that he brought to support us were amazing, like Johnny Hawker, who was the first music director. They wrote all the arrangements from scratch every week with orchestra and it was such a high standard.
“It was like a real training ground for a lot of different fields but done properly and we still keep in touch with many of the team.
“We get together every couple of years and we held a fifty year reunion at the Adelaide Festival Theatre which was just great.“
Booking can be found at www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1399242 or by calling (07) 5485 2330 or emailing admin@themajestictheatre.com.au.
