You only need to spend five minutes in one of Maria’s violin classes to realise what it is that makes Muzukidz so magical.

Music has been part of her life forever while growing up in Pretoria. Maria was introduced to the violin even before she could read or write. Her teachers Alan Solomon and Denise Sutton nurtured her talent and gave her the grounding for her to spread her wings to France when she left school.

Under the guidance of master teacher Christophe Bossuat at the Suzuki Institute in Lyon, she became the teacher she had always wanted to be. After eight years of training and teaching in various European cities, Maria returned to South Africa in 2007 with a dream to teach young, local musicians in the Suzuki method of violin tuition. From 2009 to 2014, she was appointed by the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra to establish and coordinate the orchestra’s township-based outreach programme in Langa, Gugulethu and Nyanga.

She then founded the Cape Town Violin Academy as a home for teaching the Suzuki method in the Western Cape and at the same time identified the need for children of all cultural and economic backgrounds to interact and make music together in a safe space accessible to all.

With this vision, Muzukidz was founded in 2015 and the programme was rolled out at primary schools in the city of Cape Town.