Keith Urban Partners With CMA Foundation’s Music Education Matters

Keith Urban has teamed up with the CMA Foundation to become the first artist ambassador for the campaign Music Education Matters, the CMA announced on Thursday morning (June 11) during a press conference.

Music Education Matters provides musical instruments and teaching support to programs serving inner-city youth, and Urban is passionate about this cause.

The press announcement began with the J.F. Kennedy Middle School choir from Antioch, Tenn., singing "Better Life" to welcome Urban to the event. After they walked offstage, he told the crowd, “It’s just getting involved with the awareness of music education in schools. Not only getting the instruments in the hands of kids, but giving education for them as well.”

“Music is not only powerful, it’s magical,” he adds. “It has the ability to bring people together, to inspire, calm, enhance creativity and intelligence, and to improve concentration. There is nothing like seeing the genesis of the relationship between an instrument and a child or young adult. I’m so honored and proud that the CMA Foundation has given us this opportunity to be a part of something that can have such a positive effect on so many young lives.”

Urban lives out his convictions in big ways. He's supporting the cause with a personal donation, contributing 60 Keith Urban guitars – complete with amplifiers, strings and picks – to five Music Education Matters partner programs across the country. They include Education Through Music (ETM), Harmony Project, Little Kids Rock, Metro Nashville Public Schools and Notes for Notes.

At the end of the event, Urban brought up female students from the Nashville Guitar Ensemble to help him sing his new single “John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16,” which he also performed at the 2015 CMT Music Awards.

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