I am a 3rd-generation music teacher, trained in the Suzuki Method for Piano. My grandfather studied the Suzuki Method for Violin in Japan with Dr. Shinichi Suzuki, and my grandmother taught piano and guitar for over 40 years in California and Kansas. My father, Paul Nickels, is currently a private Suzuki piano teacher based in St. George, Utah (www.stgeorgepianolessons.com), and I can say (without a shred of bias) that he is one of the world's greatest music teachers. Before I was two years old, my dad sat me at the piano and started sharing his love of music with me. With my mother a talented violinist and singer, there was always someone singing or playing something in our house!

Growing up surrounded by music seemed like the most natural thing in the world to me, but, as I learned later in life, there are many children who never get what I took for granted. When I decided to put my years of piano training to use as a private teacher in 2005, I wanted to help my students develop the same lifelong love of music, and of learning, that had been nurtured in me. My philosophy for Pianogarten is founded on the belief that formal piano lessons can (and should!) start as young as kindergarten age, and in fact sometimes even younger. Although I love to teach all ages, I know that young children have a special, natural capacity for learning that is unmatched later in life. Like language, music is best learned through observation and mimicry rather than out of a book; anyone who has parented a five-year-old knows that they are keen observers and have a voracious appetite to do what they see others doing. For this reason, I gear the majority of my teaching methods toward children between the ages of 3 and 8. Although it is definitely possible to learn to play the piano well from an older age, there is nothing quite like the effortless way children learn before they are aware that they are learning!

Before moving to Colorado in 2007 I lived in Las Vegas, Nevada for 22 years... that's a lot of long, HOT summers! I have also lived in Utah and Germany, where I worked as an au-pair. I now live in Castle Pines with my husband, two daughters and a son. When I'm not working, I enjoy singing, cooking, sewing, photography, reading, and dreaming of international travel!