About Karen

Award-winning cabaretist, KAREN KOHLER, embodies artistic versatility with her unconventional approach to performance art. Born in Frankfurt and raised in New York, her journey to the stage followed a unique path—from her earliest training in a children’s gospel choir to business success outside the arts by her 30s. She answered music’s irresistible and professional call in 1995. Named “an ambassador of German culture” by the German Ambassador to Washington, Karen faithfully interprets European cabaret traditions in several languages, seamlessly blending jazz, blues, classical and rock-folk elements into captivating performances. As singer, actor and founding producer of the Kabarett Kollektif and Kabarett Fête, Karen has garnered all major New York cabaret and club awards (Nightlife, MAC, BroadwayWorld, Backstage Bistro) throughout her distinguished career. A sought-after director, she nurtures emerging talent through master classes, lectures at universities on the history and practice of small-stage performance art, and through her guided meditations, inspires a diversity of artists in fulfilling their creative calling. In 2007, she and her husband, R. MacLean Kohler, established the world’s only academic scholarship for the cabaret arts at Long Island University where the two met as college students. In recent years, Karen has beeen writing and publishing theory, prose and poetry, lyrics, translations, and memoir.