Karen Cummings

• Lecturer in Singing, University of Sydney

Karen is a Wiradjuri and Irish background educator, singer and composer. She worked in the University of Wollongong 's Theatre and Music programs for over a decade and now works in the Music Theatre Program at Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

Karen has most recently been the dramaturg and music coach on Kit Spencer's Castrati, where Kit explores the unlikely parallels between the male Castrato voice and the trans-male voice.

She and Sonya Holliwell have been awarded a Bundanon residency in 2026 to explore Indigenous responses to place using voice and electronics. Karen is a member of Mudgingaal Yangamba, a Koori choir singing in Dhurga and Milumbar ensemble.

Karen's research and collaborative nterests include the impact of electronic mediation on singing and creative agancy, mutilvocality and framing vocal pedagogies and practices beyond the gender binary, Indigenous Music Theatre practices and Intercultural story telling and music collaborations.

Karen was part of Deborah Cheetham's company Short Black Opera (with which she has had a 15 year connection). She has a particular interest in the barriers to entry for First Nations and working-class students to Performing Arts Programs in Tertiary Institutions in Australia and of the representation of First Nation Stories in Music Theatre in Australia.

Karen's composed a work that was performed as part of Creation (Deborah Kelly and Lex Lindsay) as part of the All About Women Festival (Sydney Opera House February 2022,) New Annual Festival (October 2023) World Pride (2023) and Inner West Edge Festival (2024).

She has performed over the last 30 years works by Australian composers Andree Greenwell, Sally Whitwell, Richard Vella, Martin Wesley Smith, Rosalind Page, Stephen Adams, Australian Dance Theatre, Opera Australia and the Victorian State Opera. She has recorded and performed live for the ABC and a range of Festivals.

• –present Lecturer in Singing, University of Wollongong

• University of Newcastle, Currently enrolled in PHD Program

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