about

Max Gittings - Global Woodwind Specialist

A fluent performer on a wide range of global Flutes, Woodwind instruments and Bagpipes, Max is well versed in many different musical traditions and idioms, a specialism which has defined his career. He has performed both at home and abroad for theatre productions and at major musical festivals, recorded sessions for soundtrack CDs, TV shows and bands, and has taken part in gallery and site specific performance pieces.
He is also fully set up for remote recording in his home studio, using an AKG c414XLii microphone and Reaper digital audio workstation.

Max has often been employed as a specialist musician by the Royal Shakespeare Company, in Stratford-upon-Avon, London Barbican Centre, and on nationwide tours and world tours to Hong Kong, China, New York and Washington DC. Notable productions have included The Tempest,The King and Country Cycle and Cymbeline all with music by renowned composer Paul Englishby, Vice Versa, a comedy with music by composer Sam Kenyon that required Max to play the Irish Uilleann Pipes with a Jazz sensibility, and a production of King John in 2019 where Max found himself making his professional debut doubling on keyboards, as well as performing on the usual array of wind instruments!
He has worked with other theatre producers including the Midlands Arts Centre and Birmingham Rep in the West Midlands, and in London was one of the Deps for the Pipes and Whistle chair on Come From Away at the Phoenix Theatre in the West End until it closed in 2023.
Max is a founder member of Balkan band The Destroyers (who have played at Glastonbury, Cambridge and Boomtown Festivals), plays for the jazz ensemble Surge Orchestra (Cheltenham and London Jazz festivals) and has worked and toured with the UK Chinese Ensemble and The Jasmine Moon Ensemble.
He's also a regular player with different Ceilidh bands including The Burdock Band, The Ship Band and Rabscallion, and is active on the traditional music scene, playing in folk club gigs and sessions both in Birmingham and in Ireland.

As a recording artist Max has featured on several soundtrack CDs of music from RSC productions, including the score forTroilus and Cressida in 2018 composed by Dame Evelyn Glennie and Dave Price, and has recorded for BBC Wildlife's The Hunt, composed by Steven Price. He has appeared on the 3 albums released by The Destroyers, playing Flute, Whistles and Bagpipes, and recorded on a variety of sessions including for producer and engineer Gareth Cousins, theatre composers Frank Moon and Tom Gibbons, jazz composer Sid Peacock, and dance composer Richard Shrewsbury.
Max is a frequent collaborator with Leicester based music production company Manike Music, performing on and co-writing production-music albums for Audio Network and Bibliotheque Music and two loop and sample packages for Loopmasters with them.
He has performed with The Destroyers on BBC1 for the Opening Ceremony of the Commonwealth Games 2022 and on Sky Arts TV, with the Surge ensemble on BBC Radio 3 and has had recordings broadcast on BBC Radio 2, 3 and 4.

Following a childhood love for his parents' vinyl of Chilean folk heroes Quilapayun, Max was inspired to pick up and start learning the Flute, going on to study on the ILEA run Special Music Course at Pimlico School, London. It was then many years later during his time doing Music and Performance at The University of Birmingham and in the city beyond, that his ears were opened up to the wider world of sounds and styles from across the globe which he has continued to explore, learn from and play throughout his career. He has received tuition and guidance over the years from seminal performers in a number of disciplines including Chinese Flutes, Irish Uilleann Pipes and Flute and Armenian Duduk, and now makes the city of Birmingham his home, and the base for his career as performer and teacher.

Max's CV