Meet our team

MICM is led by Lungile Zaphi who serves as the Centre Director and Chris Bishop who is the Director of Music. Lungile is responsible for the running of the Centre’s fundraising, governance and administration. Chris manages the educational component and leads the team of music educators. MICM’s 15 highly experienced teachers, each with their successful music careers, provide individual specialist tuition on 16 different instruments, alongside group ensemble and theory classes, and our ECD programme We have 15 teachers teaching 16 different instruments. The Centre is kept neat by our ground staff namely Goodness Malatjie, Sipho Dlamini and Oupa Tlhapane. The board of MICM is comprised of Wayne Sussman, Robert Brooks, Nono Sekhoto, Khensani Nobanda, Nomo Khumalo and Simon Ghartey.

At Morris Isaacson Centre for Music (MICM), music education is used to drive positive social impact by embracing our history and our heritage. We use music education as a tool for human development through our Early Childhood Development programme where we provide music lessons for 4-6-year old learners and formal instrument-specific and ensemble music tuition for 7-18-year old learners. The impact of our project over the past ten years has been contributing to the development of the beneficiaries and sourcing national and international opportunities for them to further their music and academic studies in secondary and tertiary institutions. The communities from which most of our learners come are plagued with drug & substance abuse, high unemployment, inactivity and high crime rates. This type of environment denies them a sense of safety and an opportunity to creatively express themselves.

The lack of access to music education in the communities in which we work has resulted in them not getting exposed to the benefits of this type of education. Our programmes involve working actively with both learners and their guardians/parents. What differentiates MICM from other music education institutions is our unique model, which eliminates financial capacity as a barrier to accessing music education. We believe in providing a launchpad for students, who would otherwise be excluded, to benefit from opportunities that can positively change their lives through the scholarships to further their studies at prestigious institutions within and outside South Africa.