We’re so grateful to share the third in our series of reflections on the impact of Austin Classical Guitar on our community over the course of its 35 years.
We’d love to hear from you, too! If you have a story to share, please email [email protected].
We hope you enjoy these beautiful memories shared by Travis Marcum, who is celebrating twenty years as our Director of Education and Music & Healing.
At 35 years, ACG is a community centerpiece. It has a heartbeat and it serves as a home for so many. Each individual we have met through the years— staff, students, board members, volunteers, artists, donors, audience members, teachers— everyone has their personal reason for choosing to spend time together with us. But I think, at its core, ACG is a place where we can be inspired. We can overtly feel and express. In that experience is friendship and connection…music is the vessel.
My journey with ACG started twenty-three years ago. I was a guitar student at UT and I went to every concert ACG presented (at First Unitarian Church at the time). I couldn’t comprehend, as a young musician coming from Mississippi, that I could drive down the road and see, in person, the best guitarists in the world. I was in love with the experience. It offered me a space to witness guitar playing at its highest level and to imagine myself on that stage. ACG made my dream more vivid, more defined, and as a result more real. Today, at our concerts, I like to look around at the younger audience members and think about the dreams manifesting.
My journey working with ACG began twenty years ago when Matt Hinsley stopped me after a friend’s wedding and proposed an idea that would turn into the largest classical guitar education program in the U.S. That conversation also sparked a lifelong friendship with him, a friendship defined by deep gratitude and inspiration for the person and leader he is.
Since that day, we have built something incredible together. Tens of thousands of students worldwide pick up the guitar for the first time because of the dream we had. We have worked every day to remove barriers so that more and more young artists can realize their creative potential. We have found ourselves in every corner of our Austin community making music with folks. And it was this deepening of our roots that led to the creation of ACG Music and Healing in 2014, a program that has transformed my understanding of the capacity of music to connect us all.
Reflecting now, I am thinking of two very special, catalytic moments at ACG that shaped my life in so many ways. Both started with a little healthy fear (as many worthwhile endeavors do). The first was the moment I stepped into the gymnasium at Gardner Betts Juvenile Justice Center to begin what would become the first for-credit music class in a juvenile detention facility. I was terrified, not knowing how the students would respond to me. Waiting for class to begin, I watched in surprise as the staff led EVERY student in the facility (about 60 in all) to a seat in front of me. This was three or four times the number of students I was anticipating. I didn’t have enough guitars or footstools. But I made it through that day, not gracefully, but I made it. And during that time with them, I grew as a teacher and a human. I started making an important connection with young people who had experienced unimaginable trauma and instability. I saw in their faces how much they wanted to make music and how this journey could be one of self discovery and healing for them.
Years later in the infancy of our Music and Healing Program I met Christina during a meeting with the Livestrong Cancer Institute. I was proposing a possible program where we would partner artists with community members going through cancer treatment to co-create and record an original song as an opportunity for them to express whatever they would like. Before I got the first sentence out, Christina said, “I want to do it!”. During our first songwriting session, she began by telling me that she had, just now in the parking lot, received a call from her oncologist and she learned that her cancer would not be cured. I asked her if she’d like to cancel the session, but she said no. She wanted to write a song and help me build this program for other people like her. In an interview for a project, she once told me “I sometimes feel like I live a very small life. Like I don’t get to have big amazing accomplishments like I thought I would. I had this profound moment of looking at how beautiful these small things are that grow in the forest. And you don’t need to be the tallest tree to be important or matter… to be an important part of this ecosystem. Everything plays a role. And it’s really ok for me to live this small, beautiful life.” Through Christina, I learned how truly precious our time together with music can be.
Today, I am in awe of our community. I’m especially inspired by the amazing staff at ACG who bring heart to every task be it small or enormous. Thank you ACG.
Travis Marcum
More About Travis
SPARK: Celebrating 20 years of Travis Marcum in Concert on Dec. 7