Words! Words! I'm so sick of words! I get words all day through; First from him, now from you! Is that all you blighters can do? Don't talk of stars burning above; If you're in love, show me! ~ from My Fair Lady (lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner) Think about the last time you played with a baby. How [...]
The Home I Love: Cabaret from Berlin to Tel Aviv, teams Karen with Israeli singer Noa Levy and acclaimed New York musical director (and vocalist) Tracy Stark. Sponsored by the German Consulate in San Francisco, the show debuts at Temple Emanu-El and showcases a songbook of cabaret classics in German, English, Hebrew and Yiddish.
I've never been good at practicing. I like to be good at something quickly, and if I'm not good at something quickly, I don't like doing it. So I put it away, for awhile. Or forever. Such has been the fate of tennis, baking, sewing and tap-dancing, to name a few. The blame seems to fall squarely on the shoulders [...]
Performers are revealers; we lay a thing bare. To cultivate as broad a landscape of potential revelation as possible, we venture from the center of familiarity and recognition to the edge of mystery and uncertainty. Just as there are edges to the stage space, there are edges to us performers too. I consider the edge that place where there's nothing to hide [...]
Karen is an acknowledged authority on the history of cabaret and small stage performance. In January 2017, Karen was given an adjunct professorship to teach her 2-part course, The Tenth Muse: The History of Cabaret from Montmartre to Manhattan as part of the Hutton House Lecture Series at Long Island University. LIU/Post is the home of the world's only [...]
~ for Leonard Cohen (1934-2016) I am not sad today Goodbye Jikan To hear you’re on your way Goodbye Jikan You took your life and modeled to me living, loving, dying If I said that I was mourning now you know that I’d be lying What singer mourns a poem anyhow You are my tower of song Goodbye Jikan [...]
"Don't put anything off," is the advice of a dear friend who recently lost his wife to cancer after a long battle. Together they had been grand patrons of art in my community. I pause to assess my life. It's rich with all that I hold dear - my marriage, family, singing, directing, coaching, traveling, gardening, reading, learning. Still, I [...]
One of the first really conscious tastes I had of being fully aligned and integrated as a woman occurred during a wilderness training exercise when I was 39. I had opted into the challenge of scaling a 40-foot high rock face with many purchase points, both real and deceptive. Safely harnessed and belayed from below with lots of eyes on [...]
If you search for your soul you won’t find it. Search for anything — power, talent, time, romance, riches, God — they will elude you. Instead evoke them. Call them forth. In the case of your soul — recall it and then seed it. Uncover who you already are. Bring forth who and what you already possess. Who you are at birth is given. There [...]
I believe in breadcrumbs. Since the night I snuggled up to my Oma’s bosom to hear her read Hansel and Gretel for the first time, breadcrumbs have fueled my imagination. Haunted and yet mesmerized by this tale of witches and evil stepmothers, it was the breadcrumbs I remember most. And I began leaving them too. I didn’t do it consciously, but then neither did Hansel [...]
