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Based in New York, Karen Oberlin is a flexible singer/actress who has performed vocal jazz as well as cabaret and traditional pre-rock pop. Oberlin, whose influences (direct or indirect) range from Barbra Streisand to Ella Fitzgerald to Doris Day, is capable of singing straight-ahead bop but is far from a jazz purist or a jazz snob. One minute, she might improvise her way through a hard bop standard like Horace Silver's "Doodlin'" and show her appreciation of vocalese icon Annie Ross; the next minute, she might be Streisand-minded and embrace traditional pop or cabaret (although she doesn't get into the sort of campy lyrics that some contemporary cabaret singers are known for). Although Oberlin has benefited from certain aspects of Fitzgerald's ballad style, she isn't nearly as gritty. Oberlin (who is the daughter of two classical musicians) favors a sweetly vulnerable style of singing, and her voice has a very clear, crystalline quality -- she definitely has one of the prettier voices...