Our History
About Us
About the new CEO and Owner, Shannon Mullins
Music has shaped every season of my life.
I am a music educator, studio owner, and lifelong advocate for children and the arts. For over two decades, I’ve worked with families from infancy through advanced study, watching music build confidence, connection, discipline, and joy.
When I stepped into the leadership of Musikgarten, I didn’t see it as acquiring a company; I saw it as stewarding a legacy. Musikgarten has long honored the natural development of children through research-based, joyful music education. That philosophy mirrors everything I believe about teaching.
My commitment is simple: protect what makes Musikgarten extraordinary while guiding it forward with integrity, innovation, and heart.
Children deserve excellence.
Teachers deserve support.
Families deserve connection.
That’s what we work toward every single day.
A Family Business
Although Musikgarten serves teachers around the world, behind the scenes, it truly is a family operation.
Our Operations Manager is my older brother, Todd, which means yes, he has been telling me what to do since childhood… but thankfully, now he does it with spreadsheets and strategic planning. He brings steadiness, structure, and a deep sense of responsibility to everything we build. And now, I get to tell him what to do.
Our Vice President is my best friend of 35 years, Lisa. We grew up together, raised families, built dreams, and now we’re building this. She knows how I think before I say it, which is both incredibly efficient and occasionally dangerous.
We laugh. We problem-solve. We debate. We care deeply.
And at the end of every conversation, we come back to one guiding question:
Is this best for children?
Because that’s what Musikgarten has always been about — honoring childhood, nurturing potential, and creating foundations that last far beyond the classroom.
Musikgarten's History
Musikgarten opened in 1994 when Dr. Lorna Lutz Heyge merged her music education background with the experience and input of childhood education specialist, Audrey Sillick. These two women are the authors of the early childhood music curricula that comprise Musikgarten.
Musikgarten's co-founder, Dr. Heyge, began making a name for herself in the world of early-childhood music in 1971 as the assistant director of a music school in Germany. Commissioned by the authors of the curriculum she taught to preschool children, Heyge adapted the program and brought it to North America in 1974 as Kindermusik, educating hundreds of teachers about this curriculum before selling the business in 1993.
She met Audrey Sillick in the Toronto Montessori School and, with her guidance, continued to study the role of music and movement on the development of young children. Together, the two authors wrote curricula that reflected their combined education, experience, and the latest research in childhood development. Their beliefs and studies are at the core of the Musikgarten curricula - the same solid instruction offered since 1994.
Heyge holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music, Northwestern University, a PhD in musicology from the University of Cologne, and an Artist Diploma (the German equivalent of a Doctorate of Musical Arts) from the Cologne Musik Hochschule.
Sillick is the founder and Director Emeritus of the Toronto Montessori Teacher Training Institute. She was an internationally known writer and speaker promoting movement and music education, earth education, and Montessori teacher training. Sillick passed away in 2014, but her influence remains to this day.
