Mark Willsher is a San Francisco-based audio engineer who is known for his work on New Line Cinema's Lord of the Rings trilogy and such blockbusters as The Aviator and King Kong.

He studied music at the University of Ottawa and audio at The Banff Centre. In Ottawa, he was a trumpet major under the former principal trumpet of the National Arts Centre Orchestra, Douglas Sturdevant. It was during this time that he developed his love for recording and started a location recording company (Accent Studios) and also served as technical director for the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival. In Banff, Willsher’s mentors included John Eargle, George Massenburg, Wieslaw Woszczyk, and Theresa Leonard. While at The Banff Centre, he was awarded scholarships from both the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and General Motors.

As a producer and engineer, Willsher has collaborated with numerous world class artists including Howard Shore, John Adams, The St. Lawrence String Quartet, Renee Fleming, Lyle Lovett, and Annie Lennox on projects for Pixar, Universal, Warner, EMI, Sony, and others. This work has taken him to many of the world’s best production facilities including Skywalker Sound, Abbey Road Studios, Air Lyndhurst, Right Track Studios, Teldex Studios (Berlin), and MosFilm (Moscow). Mark’s credits cover all genres of music and include feature films, documentaries, television broadcasts, art installations, as well as straight music albums.

For over ten years Willsher has been returning almost every year to The Banff Centre as audio faculty, and was acting director of audio at the Centre for the summer of 2008. He is a section officer of the Audio Engineering Society (AES), and an engineering committee member for the Producers and Engineers wing of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS). Willsher’s background also includes software engineering on both audio and biotechnology projects including high throughput gene sequencing analysis tools used by Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline.

Willsher is currently working on an undisclosed music production software project. He lives near downtown San Francisco with his wife Cecily of the Cypress String Quartet, and their pets - portuguese water dog Dessie and maroon-bellied conure Mini.