Biography
Hailed as one of great interpreters of the Great American Songbook, Bistro and MAC Award-winning vocalist Karen Oberlin very recently received rave reviews for her three week engagement at the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel in New York. Stephen Holden in The New York Times said, ““Karen Oberlin is a demure pop-jazz singer who radiates a subdued glamour. Beyond having a pretty voice, poise and interpretive insight, Ms. Oberlin is a thorough researcher.” Rex Reed, in the New York Observer, called her recent performance “thrilling,” and continued, ““A Christmas tree angel named Karen Oberlin is lighting up the Algonquin’s Oak Room with a show that sends you out humming. Oberlin is as lovely to look at as she is to hear -- subtle, elegant and musically spot on. She’s a keeper!” The music critic for The Nation, David Yaffe, says Ms. Oberlin “reaches into the minds and muses of our golden repertoire to teach us, dazzle us, and send us to a Tin Pan Alley nirvana, as deep as the ocean and high as the sky. She is truly a marvel.” Along with the Oak Room, she has appeared at major New York venues such as Jazz at Lincoln Center, Town Hall, Iridium Jazz Club, Feinstein's, Merkin Hall and The Metropolitan Room. She entertained sold-out audiences at the Oak Room to launch the release of her highly lauded debut CD, "My Standards" (Miranda Music), the first of her two acclaimed CD’s, her latest being the award-winning, “Secret Love: The Music of Doris Day” (Miranda Music). She can be heard on a number of compilations, including the newly discovered musical by Duke Ellington and Herb Martin, "Renaissance Man," in the all-star CD version, "Secret Ellington" (True Life), which featured Joe Lovano, Grover Washington, Jr., and Freddy Cole, among others. She has a new live CD, made at the Algonquin, due in the Fall of 2010.
Ms. Oberlin appeared in more than 100 Off-Broadway performances of the smash-hit show "Our Sinatra,” and has performed her own shows nationally and abroad. She had the honor of being part of the first-ever Cabaret Conventions in both Philadelphia and the Hamptons and has performed in the New York shows at both Jazz at Lincoln Center and at Town Hall, where she was also featured in the Broadway By The Year series. Along with playing Maureen in the first staged incarnation of the now-legendary Broadway show, “Rent,” Ms. Oberlin has also held lead roles at such prestigious theatres as the North Carolina Theatre, the Palace Theatre in Louisville, The Prince Music Theatre in Philadelphia and the Ordway Theatre in St. Paul. She has appeared as a professional actress in everything from Shakespeare to national commercials, including playing a recurring nurse on “All My Children” and can been seen in both independent and feature films. She also enjoyed being part of a professional a cappella group called "Where’s The Band?" for many years.
Ms. Oberlin has a deep background in classical music, jazz, cabaret, theater and musical theater. The granddaughter of Vaudevillians and the youngest daughter of two classical musicians, she often performed and competed in classical singing events and performed steadily in theater, musical and otherwise, growing up in Central New York. As a child she played piano and flute, and cello in the county orchestra, performed in her first role in an opera at age six, and as a teen led a few local rock and new-wave bands. Since then she has performed continuously and trained extensively, graduating from the Circle In The Square Professional Workshop Broadway theatre conservatory in New York after receiving her B.A. in English Literature. New York City led Ms. Oberlin to jazz and deepened her appreciation for the Great American Songbook. She has studied voice for more than twenty years, and she teaches master classes in acting, singing and interpreting song. Ms. Oberlin is a dedicated yogi, a very happy mother and stepmother, and is married to the writer David Hajdu.