Martin Grubinger

7 min read

Percussionist. University professor at Mozarteum in Salzburg. Co-founder of MyGroove.

For twenty-five years he played sold-out halls around the world. Then he walked away from most of it and poured that same passion into building something new.

Bio & Career

Martin Grubinger is widely regarded as one of the finest multi-percussionists in the world. A musician whose technical precision, joy of playing, and versatility have redefined what percussion can be as a solo concert instrument. In doing so, he's played a defining role in bringing percussion out of the orchestra pit and into the center of the classical concert stage.

“When you cross that threshold, and you only hear your own heartbeat, when you're no longer consciously aware of anything around you, when you’ve overcome exhaustion, that’s what it’s like walking between worlds on stage.”

Martin Grubinger

Over more than 25 years of touring, he performed with the Vienna Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, and dozens of the world's leading orchestras, and held artist residencies at Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie, the Wiener Konzerthaus, and Camerata Salzburg. Composers including Avner Dorman, Friedrich Cerha, and Tan Dun have written concertos specifically for him, a distinction that speaks to both his technical range and his role in expanding the percussion repertoire itself. He's also picked up real recognition along the way, including the Bernstein Award from the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival and the Würth Prize from Jeunesses Musicales Deutschland, with recordings released on labels including Deutsche Grammophon. His large-scale projects, from The Percussive Planet to Century of Percussion, show a musician just as comfortable in solo recital as in chamber music or a full orchestral work.

Born in Salzburg, Martin drew international attention as a teenager, competing at events like the World Marimba Competition in Okaya and the EBU Competition in Norway, before studying at the Bruckner Conservatory in Linz and the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg, the same institution where, since 2018, he has served as Professor of Classical Percussion and Multipercussion, having previously taught at the Zurich University of the Arts. Today, at the height of a career many musicians spend a lifetime chasing, he has stepped back from touring to focus on two things. Training the next generation of elite musicians at the Mozarteum. And, through MyGroove, making the joy he found in music accessible to everyone else.

“We need people out there who think differently, who think revolutionary, who think innovative. And you get your inspiration, your fuel to be innovative, from the arts.”

Martin Grubinger

Two Rooms, One Belief

For most of his career, Martin's world was the concert stage. Carnegie Hall in New York, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, the Salzburg Festival. He describes playing at his best as a kind of tunnel: “When you're really in it, you forget everything around you, and you're just there to enjoy the rhythm of the music, the moment itself.” It's the same flow athletes describe mid-sprint, he says, and it's what drove him to practice up to fourteen hours a day as a teenager, chasing a single goal: to be the best percussionist on earth.

Then somewhere in his late thirties, something he calls routine started creeping into once-electrifying moments, the same halls, the same orchestras, again and again. Around the same time, he noticed something else, further from the stage: in schools and everyday life, music was losing ground. So, he made a call: to step back from touring and put his energy into two rooms that look nothing alike on paper but run on exactly the same fuel.

“We had a MyGroove workshop in Vienna with twenty kids, all eight or nine years old. One boy was different. He walked in, grabbed the guitar, played the drums, ran around the room. The teachers were a little annoyed, he was so lively, but he'll change the world. He saw all the instruments and just couldn't keep still. He wanted to change the world right then, in that moment.”

Martin Grubinger

Room one is the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg. Martin trains the percussionists who will define the next generation of concert music. His standards there are uncompromising. As he puts it, becoming a professional musician takes “100% commitment, day and night.” Τalent is almost beside the point: “I'm not so much interested in talent. Dedication, fighting spirit, discipline, this is what really attracts me.” It's the same demand for excellence that carried him from his first concert, played in front of eight people, to sold-out halls worldwide.

Room two is MyGroove, where the other half of that conviction lives. As a kid sitting in on his father's percussion lessons, Martin never once felt like practice was a chore. Ten minutes of drums, then ten minutes of football, then xylophone, then a walk in the woods, then back to the kit, all of it handled with the same lightness. “I never had the feeling that I was forced to play an instrument,” he says. “It was always playful.” He co-founded MyGroove with Viacheslav Stakhov, to hand that same feeling to anyone with an instrument and ten spare minutes. Whether they ever set foot on a real stage isn’t the point. Βut with enough dedication, that path stays open too, and the app makes sure to keep it fun the whole way there.

Two rooms give space to one core belief: the excellence that fills a concert hall and a kid's very first note come from the same place.

“With MyGroove, we can change the music world as it is. The first digital music school. That's why I'm so motivated to do the very best.”

Martin Grubinger

In His Own Words

A few moments from a MyGroove podcast conversation with Martin:

K: What’s the nerdiest thing about your world that people should know?

M: “All my instruments on stage have to be flat. No drum a little bit higher than the other. And I always used chalk before I played: I’d look out into the audience and take a few breaths. It gives you this ultimate adrenaline.”

K: Studies show music builds motor skills, creativity, resilience and concentration in kids. Why do so many parents still treat it as optional?

M: “There are good studies on this. But there’s often a trade-off between sports and music, which is sad, because music really shapes early childhood development. I think it’s essential, but it shouldn’t be forced. The important thing is a playful way of trying it out, giving kids the space to experience it and see what sticks. If they find the right instrument and have fun with it, that’s what makes it last.”

K: You’ve said artists and athletes are the same animal. Where does that come from?

M: “I feel very connected to athletes, which is why I’m so comfortable at Red Bull. Athletes and artists live the same life. We have to decide at 10 or 11, not at 18, that this is what we’re doing. That links us: discipline, commitment, hard work, and getting into every detail, every training minute, every phrasing, every centimeter on the track. We both know what it’s like to train hard at 14 and get injured right before a competition.”