Long Bio

Kari’s musical path begins with a fascination for musical designs and structures nurtured in the undergraduate composition program at the University of California, San Diego. While at UCSD, Kari studied composition with Lei Liang and Chinary Ung, with the UCSD Guardian newspaper describing her senior thesis choral composition as “lush” and “intensely harmonic.” Kari also sang with both The Daughters of Triton and The Tritones a cappella groups — experiences that ignited her love of arranging and directing. Since 2008, Kari has been an active presence at contemporary a cappella festivals (Boston Sings, Los Angeles A Cappella Festival, SoJam) and competitions (Varsity Vocals — ICCA and ICHSA) as a workshop leader, clinician, panelist, and judge. In 2010, Kari appeared as a vocal percussionist alongside Imogen Heap to perform an a cappella trio rendition of her song “Earth” at Humphrey’s in San Diego. Later that year, Kari co-founded the treble sextet Musae. In 2011, Kari was a performer and arranger on the The Sing-Off, a contemporary a cappella reality show on NBC, with LA-based supergroup Kinfolk 9 for the show’s third and largest season to date.

In 2013, Kari was a founding faculty member of Camp A Cappella, a weeklong contemporary a cappella summer camp for adults and high school students, and she has also directed high school-aged vocal groups at ReMix Vocal Academy. From 2013-2015, Kari attended the Eastman School of Music for its top-ranked program in music teaching and learning. While at Eastman, Kari worked with the women’s choir, pursued a certificate with the Arts Leadership Program, and ran graduate auditions and the Sophomore Review for the music education program. Kari also taught musicianship classes for 4th and 5th grade students at the Eastman Community School as part of its “Theory in Motion” curriculum. Her masters thesis comprised a comprehensive survey of high school choral music educators’ use and opinions of contemporary a cappella repertoire in their programs.

After graduating from Eastman, Kari joined the Young People’s Chorus of New York City as a Conducting Fellow. In addition to directing elementary and high school choirs in YPC satellite schools, she assisted with performances including “Let There Be Peace on Earth” during the Pope’s visit to the 9/11 Memorial Museum, and YPC’s annual gala concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Projects included premiering new works by Sarah Kirkland Snider, Netsayi, and Paola Prestini in a multi-media installation as part of the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Michael Gordon’s “Great Trees of New York City” at National Sawdust.

In 2017, Kari wrote a chapter for So You Want to Sing A Cappella: A Guide for Performers to introduce choral directors to vocal percussion and how to use it in their ensembles. That same year, Kari joined the Sirens of Gotham, an inclusive treble chorus specializing in barbershop and contemporary a cappella, later becoming Associate Artistic Director and co-directing the group to a first place win at the Sweet Adelines Harmony Classic. From 2017-2018, Kari attended Teachers College Columbia University for a masters of education in music, focusing on ways of fostering creativity and collaboration in choral settings. In spring of that year, Kari was a featured vocal percussionist in DCINY Presents: Total Vocal with Deke Sharon at David Geffen Hall in Lincoln Center.

In late 2018, Kari collaborated with Cory Smythe on his album Accelerate Every Voice to develop and perform vocal percussion for Smythe’s compositions (you can read about it in The New York Times). Kari was also a vocal teaching artist with Midori & Friends and the Center for Arts Education, as well as adjunct music faculty at The New School and CUNY Hunter College. In 2019, Kari was the first participant from the United States to attend the Jim Hjernøe’s weeklong Vocal Painting bootcamp at the Royal Academy of Music, Denmark—Aalborg. That fall, Kari joined the music faculty at the College of Saint Rose as a Visiting Lecturer in Choral Music, teaching courses in ear training, music theory, and choral arranging in addition to directing the university chorale. That year she also contributed chapters to Teaching Music through Performance in Contemporary A cappella published by GIA Music. In 2020, Kari joined Choral Chameleon, a 12-voice ensemble dubbed “America’s Test Kitchen for Choral Music,” for pandemic-era recording projects as a low alto. During the pandemic, Kari presented online interest sessions for festivals and conferences including CMS, ACDA, CASA, and Aarhus Vocal Festival.

In 2021, Kari matriculated to the University of Notre Dame as a doctoral student in its Sacred Music Program. In her time at Notre Dame, Kari directed the GRAMMY-winning Notre Dame Children’s Choir in concert and liturgies and participated in workshops with with Eugene Thompson, Carolann Buff, Andrew Crow, Alastair Willis, Kimberly Dunn Adams, and David Rayl. While singing with the South Bend Chamber Singers under the direction of Nancy Menk, the ensemble premiered a new version of Gwyneth Walker’s “The Great Lakes” cantata for chorus and chamber orchestra. Kari also sang with the Basilica Schola, a select liturgical choir specializing in unaccompanied sacred choral music, under the direction of Campus Ministry Choral Program Director Jonathan Hehn, as well as the Collegium Musicum, directed by music faculty member Dan Stowe. Kari joined the Sacred Music Program on their 2024 summer study trip to Rome, participating in conducting workshops with Walter Marzilli and Franz Prassl at the Pontifical Institute for Sacred Music (PIMS), and leading program-wide performances of Palestrina’s “Sicut Cervus” in the basilicas of San Clemente in Laterano and San Giovanni in Laterano.

In 2022, Kari joined the faculty of The Walden School Young Musicians Program as its choral director, succeeding choral director Dr. Sarah Riskind. In 2023, Kari returned to YMP, also attending the Walden Creative Musicians Retreat, where she workshopped her choral setting of the Ada Limón poem “Sharks in the Rivers” with choral director Thomas Colohan. She sits on the advisory board for NE Voices, an annual contemporary a cappella festival for high school singers and music educators.

As a teacher, Kari seeks answers to big questions about music as a cultural construct and commodity as well as organic sonic expression. She feels it is precisely the artifacts of this construct that can provide a new potential platform for welcoming larger populations of non-career music-makers to musicking spaces. This requires the dismantling of conservatory- and trade-based barriers to entry while fostering the creation of new teaching tools not beholden to traditional notation or music professionalization.