About ACG

Austin Classical Guitar’s mission is to inspire individuals in the communities we serve through musical experiences of deep personal significance.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion

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Austin Classical Guitar (ACG) is the leading nonprofit organization dedicated to classical guitar in the United States. Founded in 1990, ACG currently presents close to 100 concerts annually through several diverse series, showcasing the world’s greatest guitarists along with local and regional talent, in performances reaching over 10,000 audience members each year. ACG also promotes lifelong learning in the arts through enrichment classes, adult community ensembles, the highly-acclaimed ACG Youth Orchestra, and beginning guitar classes.

At the heart of the organization’s mission is ACG Education, a program that was launched in 2001 in an effort to improve the quality of classroom-based guitar instruction in Austin schools. Twenty years later, ACG’s education team is supporting for-credit guitar programs they have built in nearly 60 elementary, middle, and high schools throughout the Austin area, bringing high-quality, long-term arts education to nearly 4,000 students each week. The flexibility and comprehensiveness of ACG’s curriculum, which was published online in 2004 at GuitarCurriculum.com, has shown classical guitar to be a uniquely effective and engaging solution for under-resourced schools struggling to provide high-quality arts education for their students. Today, GuitarCurriculum.com and the teaching resources that accompany it are being used by hundreds of teachers throughout Texas and beyond, and ACG Education’s success in Austin schools is serving as a model for other communities around the world.

In recent years, ACG’s services have expanded to include innovative education programs for Travis County youth who are incarcerated or on probation, as well as braille-adapted instruction for students at Texas School for the Blind & Visually Impaired. Through a partnership with Carnegie Hall, ACG offers the Lullaby Project, an arts intervention for new and expecting mothers facing economic, social and psychological challenges.

With its groundbreaking education and social services, world-class concert presentations, a commitment to equity and inclusion in all of its programming, and the generous investment of thousands of supporters, ACG will continue to grow and pursue its mission to inspire all the people it serves with musical experiences of deep personal significance.

Austin Classical Guitar’s programs and services are made possible through the generosity of our many individual donors, along with support from:


Sue L. Nguyen Trust The Meyer Levy Charitable Foundation, Michael R. Levy The Kodosky Foundation Kaman Foundation
Sarah & Ernest Butler Kendal & Ken Gladish
MFS Foundation
Louise Epstein &
John Henry McDonald
The Cain Foundation
Karrie & Tim League Still Water Foundation Carl Caricari &
Margaret Murray Miller
Austin Classical Guitar Board of Directors

William Metz
Wright Family Foundation

Rea Charitable Trust The Benavi Family

The Burdine Johnson Foundation 2015_RBG_LOGO_with_name

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Austin Classical Guitar is funded and supported in part by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts and in part by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department. Additional funding comes from the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov.