Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
"Cellist Karen Patterson laid everybody out with her slow, sensuous version of Gershwin's Summertime." - Don Henke, Music Critic
"Gorgeous melody...regal manner...an accomplished cellist." - George Kanzler, Music Critic
"Even my 5-year-old was moved. (Mommy, she said, why aren't we dancing?") - Audience member, in a letter to the Editor
"What a joy? With musical artistry, Karen Patterson's cello painted a sweet spiritual background." - Phyllis Cambell
Discography
"Partake of My Jewels" - Spirituals
"A Voice From The Fringe" - Jazz
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
Karen Patterson began playing the cello at age 8, while a student in an experimental elementary school. She is a graduate of Ohio Univ. and holds a graduate degree from Antioch Univ. Int'l. She studied German at the Goethe Institute in Kochel am See, Germany, and with master musicians - Cellists Gerhard Hamann, Mistislav Rostropovitch, as well as Keter Betts, bassist with Ella Fitzgerald.
Karen Patterson's dynamic performances have entertained and inspired multi-cultural audiences in the U.S., Europe, South America and Africa. She has been a featured performer at the AACW Blues Festival and the Women in Jazz in Ohio; the United Nations Earth Summit & Global Forum in Brazil and the MUSON Jazz Festival in Lagos, Nigeria to name a few.
Her repertoire is varied and unique. Innovative jazz, classical and compositions of her own are programed along with peformances of African American Spirituals.
Karen is a music educator as well as a musician. She has taught at the Stadischemusikschule in Singen & Radolfzell Germany, at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City, and in the Rutgers Univ. program for inner-city youth in New Jersey. Karen also has been invited as Artist - In - Residence as well as presented workshops and masterclasses at such distinquished schools as Penn. State Univ., Syracuse Univ., Wittenberg Univ., Antioch Univ., and The Ringling School of Art & Design in Sarasota, Florida.
She presents programs uniquely designed to educate as well as entertain, combining music with other art forms, and with history and cultural expression. Her work celebrates African American musical heritage and the global significance of cultural diversity.
Highly praised by students, teachers, music critics, and audience members, Karen Patterson's works as a performer and educator has earned her the Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Educational Initiative Award, as well as grants from the Ohio Arts Council and the government of Germany.
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