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Karen Clark's recent premiere of Ben Johnston's song cycle Parable with violinist Sarah Thornblade and clarinetist James Sullivan is reviewed in the Los Angeles Times wherein Mark Swed writes: "Karen Clark brought a rich intensity to the [Rumi] stories...The performance was stunning."

San Francisco Chronicle music critic Joshua Kosman says:
"Clark's majestic, throaty singing hints of modernist extravagance and medieval troubadours."  The contralto's recording with the Galax Quartet, On Cold Mountain: Songs on Poems of Gary Snyder, released on Innova, is a culmination of works composed for her that premiered in collaboration with the Pulitzer poet. In 2012, the award-winning American composer Joseph Schwantner (1979 Pulitzer, 2012 Grammy) is at work on a new piece for Karen Clark and the Galax Quartet, titled, Dream Drapery: Five Songs on Thoreau. With support from Meet the Composer and the Indiana Landmarks Center the Schwantner world premiere is slated for October 21, 2012 in Indianapolis.

Karen's recent engagements include performances of works of Handel, Purcell, Telemann, with the Santa Rosa Symphony, the Santa Cruz Chorale; and, lieder of Brahms, and Schubert in private recitals in Berkeley. In 2011, Karen Clark toured with the Galax Quartet performing American and English Consort Song at Bowdoin College (Brunswick, ME), and at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA where she held an artist residency presenting lecture-demonstrations in poetry and music history classes; and coached the concert choir in baroque style. The week long residency culmintated in the premiere of the Chinese-Canadian composer, Ka Nin Chan's Journeys. Classical-Modern Review says: "Karen Clark has a very beautiful vocal instrument that she harnesses without undue pathos."