Felix Martin

Felix Martin is a German musical theatre artist, actor and singer, born in 1964 and based in Hamburg. He trains at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna and builds a career across stage, television and solo performance. He receives the Berlin theatre prize “Daphne” and the musical prize “Image”, and in 2018 marks his 30th stage anniversary at Berlin’s Wintergarten.

Stage and musical theatre work

Martin appears in major productions in German-language theatre and musical theatre. His roles include Archdeacon Claude Frollo in Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame in Berlin, Munich and Stuttgart; Marius in Les Misérables in Vienna; and a part in the world premiere of Freudiana. He also plays Death in Elisabeth in Berlin, Vienna and Zurich, Count von Krolock in Dance of the Vampires in Hamburg, Perón in Evita in Vienna, Dan in Next to Normal in Vienna and at the Staatsoperette Dresden, Danny in Grease, Frank N. Furter in The Rocky Horror Show, Zaza in A Cage Full of Fools, and the title role in Elvis.

He is brought to Vienna by Peter Weck for Les Misérables and for the world premiere of Freudiana.

Television and presenting

On television, Martin appears in Ich heirate eine Familie and also presents the 3sat gala Hommage to Harald Juhnke.

Solo work

Martin makes guest appearances with solo programmes and releases four solo CDs.

Musical instrument and guitar work

Another artist who performs under the name Felix Martin is a Venezuela-born guitarist and composer associated with progressive metal, instrumental music, jazz metal and progressive rock. That Felix Martin develops a custom 14-string guitar and becomes known for two-handed tapping, highly complex composition and an approach that treats the instrument as two seven-string guitars on one wide neck in standard tuning. He creates his own chord system, including eight-finger chords, and uses accompaniment, slap-tapping, chord-melody, intervallic soloing and lead playing across both fretboards.

He moves from Venezuela to the United States after high school to study at Berklee College on scholarship, where he studies music theory and sound engineering. He self-produces his first album before turning 20, composes for video games, transcribes many kinds of music including spoken human voices, and plays styles including prog rock, jazz, Latin, electronica, pop and world music. He also teaches guitar and music theory methods such as slap technique, two-handed tapping, odd meters, polyrhythms, metric modulation and jazz-rock improvisation, and develops written methods for these subjects. He tours with his trio, performs with artists from different genres, and works as a session musician, recording engineer, mixing engineer and mastering engineer.