Biography
Giles Martin grew up without much awareness of The Beatles, and was discouraged by his father from pursuing a career in music lest the inevitable comparisons should be made. Giles ignored the advice, first playing in the critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful band Velvet Jones, then writing jingles in college, then working in various musical capacities in the UK. In 1995, he was appointed co-music director for the television and radio music countdown show, The Great Music Experience. He worked on the Party at the Palace concert to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee, for which he also produced the subsequent album and DVD.
Martin's first notable producer role came with the high-selling UK band Kula Shaker. After that, his production and mixing credits came to include Jeff Beck, Elvis Costello, INXS, and Kate Bush. In 2004 Martin produced Hayley Westenra's multi-platinum album Pure, the UK’s fastest-selling classical album of all time.
Giles Martin collaborated with his father to remix, rearrange, and recombine the music of The Beatles into a soundscape for Love, a theatrical production of Cirque du Soleil, which opened to acclaim at The Mirage in Las Vegas in June 2006. Giles Martin's expertise at digital music production and manipulation in particular is what allowed some of Love's wilder mash-ups to take place. He went on to produce the music for the final Broadway performance of Rent and worked with Martin Scorsese on his George Harrison film documentary Living in the Material World.
In 2009, Giles Martin returned to the Beatles catalog, this time for The Beatles: Rock Band, a video game that allows players to simulate performing Beatles songs with plastic instruments. Martin produced the title's music, cleaning and reworking the audio to suit the game's mechanics.
Giles has been awarded two Grammy awards in his career to date, both in 2007 for the Love soundtrack album, as a producer of the Best Compilation Soundtrack Album For Motion Picture, Television Or Other Visual Media and as a surround producer of the Best Surround Sound Album.
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