Velvet Vault

Andy Hermann of DownBeat wrote "Souza brings a timeless quality to the material, whether it’s a standard like “I Fall In Love Too Easily”—rendered on Velvet Vault as a hat-tip to Chet Baker's iconic version, complete with muted trumpet—or a recent indie-rock hit like MGMT’s “Kids,” which Souza, who also produced Velvet Vault, stripped of its original electronic instrumentation and cast as a ghostly piano ballad".^[3]

Ilana Kalish of Atwood Magazine noted "Since 2011, the vintage vixen has released 5 albums of covers as a soloist and more with The Cooltrane Quartet. But, Ms. Karen is no one trick vixen. Nestled in with the cornucopia of covers galore on her latest album Velvet Vault (’17) are some very well interpreted jazz standards. Which proves to an even broader, perhaps older generation of the music world that Ms. Souza’s chops are legitimate, and her kudos well earned".^[4]

A reviewer of Broadway World stated "Featuring several jazz standards, "Velvet Vault" is a more mature and more subtle than Karen's previous efforts, and she truly feels is her best album to date".^[5]