About Kara

Kara Doyle lives in Schenectady, NY, teaches English at Union College, and plays traditional Irish music on uilleann pipes and whistle.

Kara was born in Wisconsin, and spent her youth in California. Moving to the Northeast for graduate school brought her into regular contact with traditional Irish music, and she began to play whistle in 1995. She contracted a severe case of uilleann piping fever in the late nineties, and began piping in 2001. Kara’s piping has been strongly influenced in tone, repertoire, and pedagogy by the teaching of Benedict Koehler and Brian McNamara. She admires both the tightness of Tommy Reck and the lyrical musicality of Liam O’Flynn and Mick O’Brien.

As her interest in piping grew, Kara became involved with the organization of the east coast’s largest annual gathering of uilleann pipers, the Northeast Tionól; she has served on its board for fifteen years.  She has also more recently branched out into solo performance, with her debut solo concert at the Boston Uilleann Pipers’ Club concert series in April 2019.

As a member of two area groups, The Broken String Band and Curragh, Kara has performed over the last fifteen years at music venues all over New York’s Capital District, including Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, the Washington Tavern in Albany, José Malone’s and the Ale House in Troy, Petersburgh Memorial Hall in Petersburgh, NY, the Altamont Fair in Altamont, NY, The Depot in Cambridge, NY, and most recently Murphy’s Law Public House in Leeds, NY.  In spring 2019, Curragh expanded their range from area to regional with a series of St. Patrick’s Day concerts aboard the Northern Lights in Boston.

Kara offers private uilleann piping lessons in person or online. She has given piping demonstrations and workshops at the Saratoga Dance Flurry, the Lower Hudson Valley Pipers’ Club, the Northeast Tionól, the Southeast Tionól, the West Coast Tionól in San Francisco, and the Southern California Tionól.  She has also taught private tin whistle lessons, and offered beginning tin whistle classes at Old Songs in Voorheesville, NY.