In the age of constant education budget cuts, music classes are often the first to be canceled. For over three decades, Austin Classical Guitar has been turning that tide, and now it’s entered a new era as one of the biggest tenants of the Baker Center. Austin Classical Guitar Executive Director Matthew Hinsley called it “an inspiring, civilized place to make art.”
Hinsley’s been with ACG since 1996, when he moved to Austin to pursue his master’s and then doctorate at UT-Austin. Hinsley said, “At the time, there were no staff, so I stepped in as chairman of the board, which was chief volunteer.”
It wasn’t just a good fit for him – he was a good fit for ACG, with its combined dedication to music and advocacy. In 2001, ACG started working with public schools, which is where Hinsley first learned to love the guitar: 10 years old, studying cello at school in the tiny town of Hamilton, N.Y. One day he asked the orchestra director, Mr. Vecchio, what his favorite instrument was, “and he said guitar, and that started the adventure.”
ACG’s schools program started with one class in one Austin ISD school, and Hinsley quickly realized two things. “One, lots of kids in the world want to learn to play guitar. The other thing is that America didn’t know how to do guitar in schools very well.” Music education was built around choir, band, and orchestra, “but none of that development had been applied to teaching guitar as a classroom-based endeavor, so we decided to work on that.” In 2008, ACG launched a guitar music curriculum, and it’s been adopted not simply across AISD but across the nation. At any one point, Hinsley said, “We’ve got 3,500 kids in our programs [and] we’ve provided tens of thousands of instruments to kids.”
But ACG is not just in traditional grade schools. It also established a first-of-its-kind program at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, as well as a radical and life-changing initiative teaching guitar to kids within the state’s juvenile justice system, at facilities including the Gardner Betts Juvenile Justice Center in eastern Travis County. Hinsley said, “They can sit down with other kids in that facility, that is so stark and so cold and so judgment- and measurement-oriented, and every aspect of their lives is based on the worst decision they’ve probably made, and make beauty.”
Moving into the Baker Center has allowed ACG to flourish in ways that Hinsley never expected, and simplified previously complicated operational issues like storing and shipping dozens of guitars. And while the bulk of their work remains out on campuses, having this space has allowed them to increase their adult education provision. That’s the great thing about the guitar, said Hinsley. “It’s a lovely sounding instrument in anyone’s hands, very quickly.”
The biggest boon of their new home is the Rosette performance space, which was converted from the former studios of AISD-TV. The Leagues had originally eyed it as a production space for the Drafthouse, but after conversations with Hinsley they changed tack, and it is now a stage available to arts groups and musicians, including ACG. “All that changed when we came here.” Now they’re one of the few arts institutions in Austin with offices and a purpose-built performance space in the same building. Hinsley said, “People walk into this space and they go, ‘Wow.’ Either out loud, or in their eyes, or in their smiles. And in that feeling, there is a sense of possibility.”
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This article appears in January 23 • 2026.