Diana Portzline is from Bountiful, Utah where she was raised as the oldest of eight children. When she was preschool age her parents chose to purchase a piano rather than a television for their home. Diana feels this choice had a great impact on her life as she grew up with the time to take seriously her piano lessons and other musical opportunities.

After studying piano and teaching private piano lessons during her early years, Diana then went on to earn her Bachelor’s degree in Piano Pedagogy at the University of Utah in 1983.  She continued studying music as a graduate student at Brigham Young University where she experienced the expertise of Paul Pollei’s piano pedagogy, including group piano teaching.

In 1985, Diana was able to study music education with Mary Goetze, and the late Dr. Jean Sinor at Indiana University.  During this time she discovered that a more holistic approach to piano pedagogy could be obtained by integrating the knowledge of several prominent music education experts, including Zoltan Kodaly, Carl Orff, Shinichi Suzuki, and Edwin Gordon.

In 1998 Diana became a licensed Kindermusik teacher and was actively involved teaching Kindermusik classes for children ages 0-5 years in Bloomington, Indiana.  Three years later she became certified to teach Music Makers at the Keyboard, an innovative group piano program created by Musikgarten, uniting the best philosophies in music education to create a holistic approach for children ages 6-9 to learn to play the piano.

Diana then taught Music Makers at the Keyboard to students in Indiana for 8 years.  During this time she became a licensed and certified Musikgarten teacher.  She and those whom she hired, taught all of Musikgarten’s curriculums for young children through the Bloomington City Parks and Recreation Programs.  This earned her the Musikgarten Excellence in Teaching award.

Two of Diana’s former piano students from Indiana went on to study with concert pianists and have won piano competitions and performed with symphony orchestras.  Another Indiana student went on to obtain a composition degree from Indiana University.  Here in Utah one of her former students received a degree in Media Music at Snow College, and in 2021 one of her high school students took 1st place in the Utah Music Teacher’s Association’s Composition Contest.