User:RoseRhumba/sandbox/Karen Oberlin

Karen Oberlin is an American singer and actor best known for her performances in cabaret and jazz. www.karenoberlin.com

Early Years
Karen Oberlin was born and raised in Syracuse, New York, the youngest of three children. Her parents met at Tanglewood Music Center as members of junior orchestras. Her father was the founding first chair flutist of the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra and her mother is a philosophy professor. She received her BA in English Literature, and went on to complete the two-year program at Circle In the Square Theatre School, and went on to work in theatre, musical theatre and film before being drawn to the art of cabaret by such performers as Susannah McCorkle, Mary Cleere Haran and Barbara Cooke.

Cabaret and Jazz
Oberlin has performed her shows at New York City nightclubs such as the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel, the Café Carlyle, Feinstein's/54 Below, Birdland Jazz Club, the Metropolitan Room among others. She has performed at such concert venues as Carnegie Hall, Rose Hall at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Town Hall and Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts. Her touring takes her across the U.S. and overseas annually to London and Paris. Oberlin has four recordings on the Miranda Music label, and has received the Mabel Mercer Foundation's Donald F. Smith Award for Excellence in Cabaret (2013), a New York Nightlife Award for Jazz Vocalist of the Year (2011), two MAC Awards (PUT YEARS HERE), a Back Stage Bistro Award for Vocalist of the Year (PUT YEAR HERE), a Broadway World Critics' Choice Award (2015) and she received an Honorary Doctorate in Music in 2013.