Kara Griffith

Artistic Excellence Coach

Ms. Griffith is a symphony violinist (most recently of The Venice, FL Symphony) and a modified Suzuki-based violin teacher with a degree from Indiana University. During her 35-year career in Florida she founded the 100+ student strings program at Edison Park Creative and Expressive Arts Magnet School (a public elementary school), founded Gulf Coast Music (a private music school), and most recently founded Davis School of Music (a private music school within the Sidney And Berne Davis Art Center in historic downtown Fort Myers). She was also the Education and Community Outreach Director at the Southwest Florida Symphony for 3 years, which included overseeing the two youth orchestras, annual young people’s concerts, numerous other duties; plus community outreach programs, and communications. Her strengths are both in private one-on-one teaching ages 5- 18, and in coaching smaller groups of younger students or older, high school-level chamber group coaching. Mrs. Griffith also presented numerous successful summer strings camps over the years. For fun, she also loves to thrift, collect, and decorate, and has an online Etsy store called Best Nest Elevated Home. Kara Griffith and her husband, Jim (also a violist), relocated to Santa Fe from Fort Myers, Florida in the fall of 2024 for him to become the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival’s new Executive Director