Folk Singer to Give Rare Performance at Temple Emanuel

When contacted Karen Goldberg about performing in its concert series, the singer-songwriter guitarist immediately knew she’d have to shake some of the rust off.

Goldberg, who toured nationally for three decades prior to becoming a music teacher about 10 years ago, has stayed active with her guitar—she just needed a refresher course on some of her old songs.

After a couple weeks of going over song lyrics and guitar chords, Goldberg is amped to take the stage at the temple at 7:30 p.m.

“I’ve been practicing for a weeks to remind myself of the lyrics to certain songs," Goldberg said. “When you do stuff all the time its right at the tip of your tongue, but now it’s kind of pushed back. I’ve pushed some cobwebs out of the way and looked up lyrics to songs and reminded myself what the chords changes were. It’ll be fun.”

Temple member Cliff Essman—who actually took tennis lessons from Goldberg as a kid—organized the concert on behalf of TESCA, the Temple Emanuel Studio of Cooperative Artists. The group promotes arts within the temple, and emphasizes performing arts as well as visual art.

“There’s a lot of people in our temple who are music enthusiasts,” Essman said.

TESCA hosted its first concert in July with a performance from . For Essman, booking Karen Goldberg was a no-brainer.

“I actually heard her perform 25-30 years ago,” Essman said. “I bought all her CDs, went around to places she was playing.”

Goldberg’s wit, sense of humor and voice are what reeled Essman in. With her being a Reisterstown resident and also having songs related to Jewish culture, having her perform at the temple seemed perfect.

Learning to play guitar in the heyday of Crosby, Stills and Nash, Carole King, James Taylor and Carly Simon, Goldberg describes her music as having a jazzy folk style, comparing it to that of Joni Mitchell.

“It’ll be a nice opportunity for me to perform because I don’t do it often,” Goldberg said. “When I do, it’s special as opposed to it being my main source of income and what I commonly always do. It takes on a different feeling when it’s every now and then instead of it being my regular gig.”