The Latest
Instructions on Not Giving Up (2026)
text: Ada Limón
music: Karen Goldfeder
performers: Katharine Dain, soprano; Brock Tjosvold, piano
ABOUT
Karen Goldfeder's work celebrates the power of music to communicate. It can weave ornate subtleties, juxtapose layers of parallel truths, state the obvious with visceral power, make our hearts and bodies dance, teach us to listen and to understand. Karen's music reflects the wide-ranging influences and imprints of her eclectic performing career: Stravinsky, Strayhorn, Mahler, Machaut, Ives, Monk. Like all inhabitants of the contemporary world, she attempts to weave a unified fabric from seemingly disparate threads.
Karen Goldfeder writes music and sings.
Born in Brooklyn, NY, Karen learned to play the guitar at four and spent her early childhood harmonizing with her parents and trying to sound just like Odetta. By thirteen she earned her Local 802 card — as a French horn player - and sang the alto solos in the Pergolesi Stabat Mater. She has performed in jazz and folk clubs, in musicals, in churches and temples, and on the operatic stage. She has toured and recorded with choral ensembles including New York Virtuoso Singers, Voices of Ascension, Musica Sacra, the Gregg Smith Singers and The Choir of Trinity Wall Street and with jazz artists including Bobby McFerrin, Abbey Lincoln, and Jay Clayton. She has premiered and performed works by numerous contemporary composers including Patrick Zimmerli, Eric Whitacre, Hayes Biggs, and Han Lash. She has been featured in stage productions of Kurt Weill's Mahagonny Songspeill, the original musical The Big Window at the Edinburgh Fringe, and in John Adams' Death of Klinghoffer at BAM. She can be heard on many recordings, including the MasterWorks complete Stravinsky choral works conducted by Gregg Smith, Frank London's klezmer-rock musical A Night in the Old Marketplace, and Mary Jane Leach’s haunting Ariadne’s Lament.
Karen’s growing art song repertoire includes settings of the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Ada Limón, and Susan Stewart, excerpts from Oriana Fallaci’s 1976 interview with Henry Kissinger, and anonymous love letters from the 1930s. In 2026 she was invited to premiere new work at two art song festivals: the inaugural songSPARKS program in collaboration with the Collaborative Piano Institute at the University of Michigan and (art)SongLab in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Karen’s choral compositions and arrangements have been performed by the Eastman Chorale, New York Treble Singers, the Marble Collegiate Church Sanctuary Choir, the Choir of St. Francis Assisi, the Choir of St. Paul's Episcopal Rochester; the Great Neck Choral Society, the Women’s and Girls’ Choir Festival, the Skyward Singers, and Kiitos: A Vocal Quartet.
She has scored two short films for director Melissa Hacker: the experimental memoir Letters Home, which won acclaim at the New York Film Festival in 2011, and the dramatic travelogue 256,000 Miles from Home, recently featured at the 2026 Cleveland International Film Festival. They are currently at work on the feature length animated documentary Ex Libris: A Life In Bookplates.
Karen attended Manhattan School of Music's preparatory division and Oberlin College & Conservatory. She holds a B.A. from SUNY Empire State and an M.M. from the Eastman School of Music's Beal Institute for Film Music and Contemporary Media. She is a member of AGMA, ASMAC, and the SCL.
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