“Music education is about more than learning notes and chords – it’s a pathway to creativity, confidence, discipline, and human connection,” says Martin CEO Thomas Ripsam.
As musicians, all our stories are different, but we all remember the first time we picked up a guitar, and how quickly we became obsessed with learning how to play the instrument and start playing our favourite songs.
Many persevere, but many aspiring players also quit, and it’s a number Martin has made its mission to drive down.
As evidenced by its industry-leading contributions to music education programmes – which include 103 grants totalling nearly $600,000 via the Martin Guitar Charitable Foundation in 2025 alone – the legendary acoustic guitar brand is adopting the mantra: “More to start and fewer to quit”, and celebrates all things Music Education in the 2026 edition of the Martin Journal.
The new Martin Journal: The Music Education Issue – created by Guitar.com in partnership with Martin, sees the top brass at the nearly-200-year-old acoustic guitar powerhouse wax lyrical on their formative moments picking up a six-string, and features exclusive interviews with leading Martin players including fingerstyle maestro Molly Tuttle and Americana icon Jason Isbell.
“I had coveted Dreadnoughts since I was a kid,” Tuttle explains of her early love of Martin acoustic guitars. “In the end, my dad worked out a deal with the shop: if I could save up $2,000, they would let me buy a D-28.”
“A Martin guitar doesn’t insist on being the main character,” says Isbell, who recently unveiled two Martin signatures modelled after his treasured pre-war 0-17. “It’s an instrument that’s clearly designed for people who take their music seriously, but it’s not trying to be the most beautiful thing in the room.”
The new Martin Journal also dives deep into Martin’s groundbreaking new partnership with the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA), the music school founded by Paul McCartney and Mark Featherstone-Witty. The school – founded in 1996 – reached a milestone in 2025 when it received clearance to award its own degrees, previously awarded through Liverpool John Moores University.
“It’s a huge thing for us,” LIPA’s CEO and principal Sean McNamara tells us in the new Martin Journal. “It completes the last step of the journey, from being established in what was a derelict building in 1996 to becoming an autonomous performing arts university.”
The new partnership has seen Martin donate three guitars, a bass and a ukulele to the school to help students learn, and will see Martin award the top-graduating guitar student with Paul McCartney’s favourite acoustic guitar, the legendary D-28.
“Music, imagination and creative expression are part of our DNA at LIPA, and you can feel that same spirit deeply embedded within Martin as well,” McNamara says.
You can read the full 2026 Martin Journal at martinguitar.com.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source guitar.com ’
