Junior Ian Martin is an up-and-coming artist who has recently released many works of his own. Martin’s most recent release was a single, titled “Flop,” that was released March 28. 

Since the start of the pandemic, he has faced some roadblocks when it comes to creating music in school. At RV, he participated in wind ensemble, marching band and jazz band. Since COVID-19, he has only stuck with a jazz band because he wanted to be able to focus on himself and his own music. He feels that recently the experience has been different with music classes, and the incoming freshmen are not as focused on the music.

“I feel like as time goes on, the incoming freshmen start to care less about jazz,” he said. “The thing I really enjoyed was performing with the jazz band because it was different music, not the classical stuff.” 

Because Martin does everything by himself in his own room, luckily, there has not been a pause in his personal music-making. “I do everything right here at this desk,” he said. “Everything you hear on there is me.”

He also writes everything but explains that he sometimes struggles with finding the topics to write about. “I feel like if I was able to do that, that would be like the final door open to my music creation process,”  Martin said.

When asked what his biggest accomplishment was, he said, “I’d like to say the album that I put out, but an artist can never truly never enjoy their work.” He explained that the creation process was very rushed and that he created the entire EP in just over two weeks.

“People pushed me to do it, and I internalized that, and I ended up rushing,” he said. One of his songs he had put a month of work into, but in Martin’s words, the others were “on the crunch.”

Martin is most proud of his two most recent songs “Bad Dream” and “Flop.” He feels it is that he is currently focused on practice and how that will help his music get better with time. 

In the future, Martin does not intend on going to college. “I’ve been told that I have a really unusually strong drive and ambition to do things,” he said. “I’m applying that to my music career, and people think I’m crazy when I say I’m not going to college.” He feels that you can go to college to pursue music, but it’s not necessary. “You gotta have that combination of talent and ambition and drive to be really successful,” he said. “If you lose focus on what you really want, then you lose.”

You can find Martin’s music on any of the main streaming platforms including SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube. They are all linked in his Instagram account (@jazhatttt).