Our mission is to support the music-making of young people in the UK and in Kenya. 

We have 3 aims:

International: To support the education of disadvantaged African young people; in particular their musical development and the musical opportunities offered them. We work with Nairobi-based schools Starehe Boys’ & Girls’ Centres, recruiting volunteer music teachers from the UK to spend some time working with the Starehe students. We also support El Sistema Kenya in providing musical opportunities to children living in Kawangware informal settlement in Nairobi.

National: To support the work in the UK of Music for Youth and other music-based charities by offering financial assistance to events and activities.

Local: To support musical activities in Martyn’s home town of Macclesfield by sponsoring community arts projects, concerts by young musicians and providing quality instruments on a loan free basis for promising young performers.

 He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of music of all kinds which amazed his boss at Forsyth’s Music Shop in Manchester where he worked for a short time. He was also blessed with a phenomenal aural memory which could recall at will using his voice, hands and feet any music he’d ever heard with astonishing pitch and rhythmic accuracy. These ‘performances’ could happen any time and in any place completely with affectation or prompting, just as the spirit moved him! Perhaps this accounts for his exceptional versatility as a musician who could play to professional level on the violin, piano, bass guitar and drums. He also had a good singing voice which he had started to develop in a jazz ensemble. 

 In his teens, Martyn played the violin in Cheshire County Youth Orchestra and toured the USA twice. He was a member of the Methodist Association of Youth Clubs’ Orchestra and with this group had the experience of playing in some of the country’s leading concert halls, including memorably the Royal Albert Hall where he took part in a BBC ‘Songs of Praise’ programme. At the University of East Anglia in Norwich he obtained a music degree and two highlights there were his appearance as Pooh Bah in the ‘Mikado’ by Gilbert and Sulivan and as the violin soloist with the university orchestra in Haydn’s G major concerto. During the vacations on a number of occasions he worked as a stage manager for Music for Youth, helping to run the National Festival on London’s South Bank and the Schools Proms in the Royal Albert Hall. 

 Following university he travelled abroad, notably to Nairobi in Kenya, where he taught music for 2 years as a volunteer at Starehe Boys’ Centre. Upon his return he was involved with Macclesfield Majestic Theatre Group, playing keyboards and bass guitar in a number of shows and in May 2002 was musical director for the Spring Show. 

 Martyn’s untimely death was a profound shock to everyone who knew him. His family and friends are sure that it would be Martyn’s fond wish for his infectious love of life and music to be perpetuated through a music trust in his name.