A Sharp School Of Music

A Sharp School of Music owner Nicole LeGault perches at the piano bench of a practice room, strawberry-blond hair tucked into a ponytail, pink-nailed hands folded demurely together. But when she belts out a song that reverberates through the room, you realize this dame is dynamite.

Though Nicole is serious about songs, her work space is upbeat and kid-friendly. Olaf the smiling snowman and Sven the red-tongued reindeer (both creatures from the movie Frozen) grace the top of her piano. An "indestructible" metronome shaped like an owl beats out the rhythm for her young students.

There are eight music studios at A Sharp School of Music - six contain pianos, one has guitars, and one sports a snazzy drum set.

Nicole has been tinkering with tunes all her life. “I was always very musical,” she says. She began playing piano at age five, and by age eleven she was playing pop music. Nicole began singing to accompany herself. “I had the melody and the pitch but I didn’t sound good,” she says, adding that she hoped to someday become a lead singer. So at age 19 she found a voice coach, embarked on intensive lessons and fulfilled her dream of becoming a lead singer, performing with the all girl punk band Fidget.  “It was a lot of fun – the singers get all the glory,” she says.

Nicole eventually became a music teacher but she was frustrated by her employers’ financial priorities. One day she decided to open up her own music school where she could tune in to the needs of her students– “a fun, safe place that was not all about the money,” she says. She called it A Sharp School of Music, with “sharp” representing a pun on the adjective as well as the term used for a half tone above the note of A.