Kara serves as principal violist of the Asheville Symphony and is a founding member of the Asheville-based Opal String Quartet. She performs extensively across the region as an orchestral and chamber musician and has collaborated and recorded with local artists such as Free Planet Radio, Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, and The Get Right Band. Kara has been featured as a soloist with the Asheville Symphony, Pan Harmonia, and Blue Ridge Orchestra, and has enjoyed chamber music collaborations with Béla Fleck and Emanuel Ax.

 

As violist of the Opal String Quartet, Kara has served as Artist-in-Residence for the educational outreach programs of the Asheville Chamber Music Series and the Asheville Symphony Guild in Buncombe County Schools for the last ten years. She formerly taught at the Joyful Noise Community Music & Arts Center for many years, offering violin, viola, and cello lessons, and directing both their chamber music program and Summer Strings camp. Kara has completed six weeks of Suzuki teacher training at the South Carolina, North Carolina, and Atlanta Suzuki Institutes.

 

Kara is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music (BMus in viola performance and music education), where she studied with John Graham and the Ying Quartet. While at Eastman, she performed and recorded with the new music ensemble Alarm Will Sound and was a core member of Gamelan Lila Muni, a Balinese music ensemble.

Kara began playing the viola at age eleven at the Duke University String School with Dorothy Kitchen. As a young adult, she served as principal violist in several youth orchestras, won the Raleigh Symphony concerto competition, and attended summer festivals at Interlochen, Musicorda, Eastern Music Festival, and Brevard Music Center.

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In addition to her extensive performance schedule, Kara teaches and directs the string program at the Asheville Waldorf School, maintains a home studio of private violin and viola students, and is the proud mama of a strong and clever girl named Elsie Jane, currently a 4th grader at AWS.