Karyelle Danae Fleck Nielsen

1982 -

Karyelle Nielsen directed the band and elementary choir programs and taught elementary classroom music and high school Spanish at Skagit Adventist School in Burlington, Washington, from 2006 to 2012. During her last year, she taught part-time and then resigned at the end of the school year to be a full-time mother.

Karyelle was born in Oregon, the daughter of Richard and Sharon Fleck. She was raised in a musical home, her father being a singer and classical guitarist and her paternal grandparents, missionaries in Latin America, having been involved in music evangelism.

She started piano lessons at age seven. While in grade school in Battleground, Washington, she accompanied the choir. During her eighth grade year, she was invited to join the percussion section in the band at nearby Columbia Adventist Academy.

Although only given basic instruction about playing percussion, Karyelle enjoyed that experience and became a skilled player on her own. Upon graduating from the academy in 2000, she enrolled at Walla Walla College, now University, where she majored in music with percussion as her performance area. A 2006 B.Mus.Ed. graduate, she was a recipient of the Eugene and Betty Soper Scholarship Award. She has subsequently taken some graduate work in music education at Vandercook College.

She is married to Erik Nielsen, an accomplished French horn player who is an airline pilot. They have a daughter, Kalea, born July 2011.

ds/2012

Sources: Senior Recital program; Skagit Adventist School website biography (2012); Email, 4 January 2013; NPUC Gleaner, 1 October 1984, 21 and 20 May 1985, 22; personal knowledge.