AES Student Blog

Martha de Francisco is a record producer and recording engineer who specializes in Classical music. She is a professor for Sound Recording at McGill University in Montreal.

An internationally acknowledged leader in the field of sound recording and record production Martha has recorded with some of the greatest classical musicians of our time for the major record labels and in the best concert halls. She has credits on over 300 recordings, mostly for worldwide release, many of which have been distinguished with the most prestigious awards.

A graduate from the renowned Tonmeister program at the Musikhochschule Detmold, Germany, Martha was one of the pioneers of digital recording and editing in Europe during the 1980s. In her many years on staff as producer/engineer/editor with Philips Classics, she developed long lasting working relationships with many prominent artists.

Martha has been entrusted with the recording legacy of world-class soloists and orchestras from Alfred Brendel to the Philadelphia Orchestra. She has worked with such artists as Jessye Norman, Claudio Arrau, Simon Rattle and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Kent Nagano and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, John Eliot Gardiner, the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir and Neville Marriner and the Academy of St.Martin-in-the-Fields. She has recorded in a variety of venues throughout the world, including the Musikverein in Vienna, Carnegie Hall in New York, the Moscow Conservatoire, Bayreuth Festspielhaus, Suntory Hall in Tokyo and the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.

Martha is a frequent lecturer at international professional conferences as well as a guest lecturer at leading schools for higher education in Audio in locations as varied as Banff, Moscow, Düsseldorf, Bogotá and New York.                 

Her research topics include the latest surround-sound techniques, music recording with virtual acoustics and the aesthetics of recorded music.