About
Kara Lochridge
Kara Lochridge lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she has worked full-time in Patrick Olwell's flute shop as an apprentice since 2004. In addition to making flutes there, she also works on restoration and repair jobs that come in, as well as on antique flutes in Patrick's private flute collection.
Kara has played the flute for over 20 years, starting on the silver flute as a child and then seriously taking up Irish music on the wooden flute in 1997. She received her bachelor's degree in flute performance from the University of Wyoming, where she was encouraged to pursue her interest in Irish traditional music by spending a year at University College Cork in Ireland. Kara later went on to do graduate work in the Folklore Institute at Indiana University, where she spent her first year working in the IU Archives of Traditional Music. While she researched and wrote her master's thesis on the Material Culture of the Irish Flute Tradition under the guidance of her advisor, the folklorist Dr. Henry Glassie, she also studied silversmithing in the Metalsmithing and Jewelry Design program at the IU School of Fine Arts.
Kara also serves as an instructor for the Blue Ridge Irish Music School, teaches private flute and whistle lessons, and co-hosts a Sunday night session at Durty Nelly's pub in Charlottesville with fiddler Louise Walisser.