As a classical artist, Kara has performed solo and chamber music across the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Holland, and the Czech Republic. She has performed solo and chamber music in New York’s Music in Midtown series, the Pablo Casals Festival, Zeist Music Days, Ameropa Festival, Bowdoin Summer Music, and many more. She has performed at New York’s Lincoln Center and Chicago’s Symphony Center, in Napoleon’s castle in Paris and played sonatas with Mozart’s own piano at his former home in Prague.

Her orchestral career includes membership in the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Fontainebleau Chamber Orchestra in Paris, and the DiCapo Opera of New York City. In 2014, she was inducted into the Sycamore Music Hall of Fame in her hometown of Sycamore, Illinois.

Kara’s greatest passions are solo practice and teaching. More than any stage or concert hall, Kara’s favorite place to make music is in her home studio with her own students. She is a mentor to 18 young violinists ranging in age from 3 to 18 at the Willamette Violin Academy, where she serves as director.

As a recording artist and popular-music performer. Kara has been featured on mtv.com, National Public Radio, and daytrotter.com, and on record labels such as Eenie Meenie and Lookout! Records. Her discography includes arrangements and performances with Troubled Hubble, The Gunshy, Future Monarchs, and Andrew Jackson Jihad. In 2023, she released her solo debut, an EP called “Something Might Otherwise Have Profitably Happened.” Kara maintains an active studio career, recording for artists from as far as Abu Dhabi in her home studio in Oregon.

Kara has held faculty positions at Northern Illinois University and CUNY Brooklyn Conservatory, and has taught music theory at the University of Oregon. In the summers, she teaches at Japan-Seattle Suzuki Institute and the Oregon Suzuki Institute. Her most dear and impactful teachers and trainers include Mathias Tacke, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Danny Phillips, Cyrus Forough, Ann Montzka Smelser, Ed Kreitman, Charles Krigbaum, Daina Staggs, and Jackie Bartsch.