Giles Martin at
Abbey Road Studios

 

Multi Grammy award winning Giles Martin has enjoyed global success as a music producer, composer, arranger and creative leader. The British multi-instrumentalist has worked worldwide with critically acclaimed TV and film projects, studio recordings and stage shows.

Giles Martin’s music career began with producing psychedelic rock band The K’s, who later signed to Sony, releasing their material as Kula Shaker with further production work for indie bands including Monorail and My Life Story – a Britpop band with an orchestral twist.

Following his indie success, the son of the late record-producing legend Sir George Martin, co-produced a handful of major label projects with his father. Projects included The Glory Of Gershwin, a tribute album, in celebration of American musician Larry Alder’s 80th birthday featuring Alder’s lifelong friends Sting, Elvis Costello, Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel and Sinead O’Connor. Other projects included The Beatles Anthology and In My Life, George’s last album, featuring Robin Williams, Celine Dion, Phil Collins and Vanessa-Mae.

Following his early creative experiences, Giles concentrated on combining songwriting with production, skills that helped him during his work as in-house A&R producer at Sony label, Instant Karma. In 2003, Giles moved on to establish himself as a freelancer, producing and contributing as a writer to the chart-topping debut album for Universal artist Hayley Westenra’s Pure - the fastest selling classical album of all time.
 
 
Reunited with his father in the studio in 2004, he commenced work on the production of the soundtrack for Love - the acclaimed Beatles / Cirque du Soleil show that opened in Las Vegas in June 2006. The show sees performers enact their acrobatic feats to Beatles’ songs from I Want to Hold Your Hand and Help! through to Something and Get Back and has been seen by over nine million people in more than 5,500 performances since it opened.

Giles has worked on a diverse range of projects in new media, TV and theatre as well as films with Martin Scorsese and Ron Howard. In 2017 in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Martin and Abbey Road Senior Engineer Sam Okell created a new mix of the original record. The box set features remixed versions of all the album’s tracks and a 114-page commemorative book, as well as two discs of unreleased material from The Beatles.

Most recently, Giles has been announced as Executive Music Director for legendary rock band INXS and Petrol Records. He first met INXS in 1994 whilst working on The Great Music Experience, a concert in Japan starring Japanese and international musicians. Martin's most recent collaboration with INXS saw him mixing their classic album Kick in Dolby Atmos with Sam Okell at Abbey Road Studios for the seminal recording's 30th anniversary reissue in 2017.

Martin is also the Sound Experience Leader at home audio company Sonos, taking an artistic approach to listening, working on product development and the end-user experience.

In October 2018, Martin was appointed by Universal Music Group to the global role of Head of Audio & Sound, based at Abbey Road Studios. Since then, Giles has helmed the production and remix of the 50th anniversary version of The Beatles iconic White Album, variously described as ‘revelatory’ (Rolling Stone) and ‘magnificent’ (Forbes). Most recently he worked as the producer and musical director for the soundtrack to the new Elton John biopic Rocketman, reimagining the legendary singer-songwriter's classic hits, tailoring the music specifically to complement the movie narrative.
 

Giles Martin talks about his work on Sgt Pepper

 

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