Dr. Kara Eubanks, Director
Dr. Kara Eubanks is violin faculty at the University of Oregon and the director of the Willamette Violin Academy in Eugene, Oregon. She has performed solo and chamber music across the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Holland, and the Czech Republic, at New York City’s Lincoln Center, Chicago’s Fine Arts Building and New York City’s Elebash Hall. Kara has been a member of the Chicago Civic Orchestra, the Fontainebleau Chamber Orchestra in Paris, France, and the DiCapo Opera Orchestra of New York City. In 2014, she was inducted into the Sycamore Music Hall of Fame in her hometown of Sycamore, Illinois.
As a recording artist and popular-music performer. Kara has been featured by MTV, NPR, and Daytrotter. Her discography includes arrangements and performances with Troubled Hubble, The Gunshy, The Felix Culpa, Inspector Owl, Heligoats, Future Monarchs, and AJJ.
Passionate about working with young artists, Kara spends summers teaching at the Japan-Seattle Suzuki Institute and the Oregon Suzuki Institute.
Lillie Manis
Violin and Viola
Widely recognized for her work as a Suzuki educator, Lillie Manis is currently completing her doctorate at Teachers College, Columbia University, where her research focuses on studio teachers' holistic strategies for cultivating expressive performance in young violinists. From 2009-2020, she was a faculty member at the University of Oregon School of Music and Dance, where she mentored graduate violin and viola pedagogy students and served as the Assistant Director of the Community Music Institute. In the first decade of her teaching career, both the members of her vibrant pre-college studio and her graduate student mentees have achieved noteworthy musical and professional success, including competition wins, full scholarships to major music schools and summer programs, and college teaching appointments. Active as a clinician, masterclass presenter, adjudicator and conference presenter at both the regional and national levels, she enjoys performing chamber music alongside some of the northwest's finest players, and recently joined the editorial committee of the American String Teacher. She is deeply grateful for all she's learned from the parents of her violin and viola students as she raises (and practices piano with!) her eight-year-old son, Ellery.
Nathalie Fortin
Collaborative Piano
was born in Montréal, Canada. She holds degrees from the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal, the Eastman School of Music, and the University of Southern California. Her focus on collaborative arts led her to work as an accompanist at the Montréal Conservatory and gave her the opportunity to work for music festivals in France and Belgium, and perform in piano trios in St Lucia and Austria. Since she moved to Eugene in 2002, she has performed with the Oregon Bach Festival, Eugene Opera, Ballet Fantastique, and Chamber Music Amici. She has also co-produced Covid-era outdoor concerts with soprano Laura Wayte, and she regularly collaborates with artist Siri Vik at the Shedd Institute for the Arts. She currently does collaborative work at the University of Oregon’s School of Music and Dance, Cascadia Chamber Opera, Thurston High School music theater and choir departments, The Eugene Gleemen, and Eugene Vocal Arts. She is excited to be joining Willamette Violin Academy as a collaborative pianist.
Dr. Dasol Um
Collaborative Piano
Korean-born pianist Dr. Dasol Um recently earned her Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano Performance from the University of Oregon. She is a first-prize winner of the 2025 MTNA–Stecher and Horowitz Two Piano Competition, the Music Association of Daegu Competition, and the GVSU Concerto Competition, and has also been recognized as a laureate of the Grand Rapids Youth Symphony Orchestra Competition. Dr. Um has appeared as a soloist with the Daegu Strings Symphony Orchestra in South Korea and the GVSU Symphony Orchestra, and has performed in masterclasses with renowned pianists including Sergei Babayan, Antonio Pompa-Baldi, Boris Slutsky, and Martín García García. She holds a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from Grand Valley State University and Master of Music degrees from Ithaca College and the University of Oregon, earning scholarships and assistantships throughout her studies. An active pedagogue, Dr. Um has presented at national conferences of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA), the College Music Society (CMS), and the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy (NCKP). She currently teaches at the Pavilanis School of Music, serves as a church pianist and organist, and works as a staff accompanist at the University of Oregon and throughout the state of Oregon.
Dr. Drew Nobile,
Music Theory, Popular Music
Drew Nobile is Associate Professor of Music Theory at the University of Oregon, a position he has held since 2015. At the Willamette Violin Academy, Drew teaches private theory and composition lessons.
Before coming to the UO, he served on the faculties of the University of Chicago and Brooklyn College. Drew’s music theory research focuses on harmony and form in classic rock music, mathematical applications to 20th-century music, and rhythm and meter in tonal music. His work has received the Patricia Carpenter Emerging Scholar Award, the Dorothy Payne Award, and the Barry S. Brook Dissertation Award. In a former life, Drew was an active violinist, having performed across the country in venues including Lincoln Center in New York, Benaroya Hall in Seattle, and Symphony Hall in Boston.