Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival. Works and performers: Leevi MADETOJA: Piano Trio in E minor, Op. 1. Elina Vähälä, Bjørg Lewis, Heini Kärkkäinen. Krishna NAGARAJA: Peripheries for string quartet, world p...

Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival. Works and performers: Leevi MADETOJA: Piano Trio in E minor, Op. 1. Elina Vähälä, Bjørg Lewis, Heini Kärkkäinen. Krishna NAGARAJA: Peripheries for string quartet, world…

Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival. Works and performers: Leevi MADETOJA: Piano Trio in E minor, Op. 1. Elina Vähälä, Bjørg Lewis, Heini Kärkkäinen. Krishna NAGARAJA: Peripheries for string quartet, world…

Mamta Patel Nagaraja grew up in a small town in West Texas, where her parents ran a motel. Nagaraja and her older sister were both fascinated by space, which felt like a portal into the unknown. "There wasn't much grass, but I would lie down on the concrete and just look up and wonder," she said. Nagaraja said she remembers looking up to her dad—who, at 5-foot-8, was not particularly tall—and thinking, "When I am as big as my dad, I'll be able to touch a star and grab it." While Nagaraja's sister eventually pursued other dreams, Nagaraja's never wavered. Soon after starting college, she secured an ongoing internship at NASA, which, in the early 2000s, was the only choice for aspiring astronauts. "It was kind of the Everest," Nagaraja said. "If you could get it there, then you had really made something of yourself."