On Monday, DECEMBER 16, 2019, Kim David Smith and pianist Tracy Stark returned to Club Cumming in the East Village with a holiday treat, "A Wery Weimar Christmas." Yours Truly made a guest appearance! "His Weimar mother, muse & chanteuse Karen Kohler brought the house down with laughter singing Surabaya Santa - a paean to the trials of being [...]
On January 25, 2019 Everything's Coming Up Karens debuts at the Beach Cafe, bringing together four distinctly different Karens of cabaret for an eclectic night of song, story and comedy at the Beach Cafe. Alongside Karen K are Karen Oberlin, Karen Mack and Karen Gross with Ted Firth on piano to tie it all together.
On May 21, 2018, Karen and Robert (Fin and Mac) celebrate 35 years of friendship (and 30 of them married), having met as college students on Long Island. To commemorate the event and to support the cosmic vision of painters Alex and Allyson Grey, the Kohlers sat for Alex at the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in Wappinger Falls, NY. [...]
In May 2016, Karen founds the international sisterhood Crown, a collective of colleagues and friends in their peak years. To mark the group's second anniversary, Karen organizes the inaugural Crown Circle, a dialogue between youth and elder women, on April 28, 2018 at the Sheen Center for Thought and Culture in NYC.
The Corpses, Karen's first novella, is published in December of 2017 through her own publishing company, Sumya Press. Her debut poetry collection, Petrichor, is released in March of 2019.
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.
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 [...]
On May 7, 2015, Karen debuted Suitcase in Berlin: Songs of Brecht and the Poet Troubadours at the Irondale Center in her hometown of Brooklyn, NY. In the program she wove together the story song composers she loves most including Jaques Brel, Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and Noel Coward. A few days later she was featured with a [...]
In the fall of 2014, Karen's longtime cabaret pal and collaborator KT Sullivan, director of the Mabel Mercer Foundation in NYC, invited her to curate and direct a European offering as part of the Foundation's annual cabaret festival. Kabarett with a K was held at the Cutting Room on October 24, 2014 and featured many members of Karen's decade-old [...]
In the summer of 2013, following a concert at the German-Heritage Museum in Los Angeles to mark the 50th Anniversary of JFK's historic visit to Berlin, Karen took her longest running (since 1995) cabaret act Das Kabarett: European Cabaret and American Pop and headed to London for a run at the Crazy Coqs Cabaret. Leigh Thompson accompanied. From April [...]
