The lights go down, the bass rattles your ribcage, and suddenly a tunnel of infinity opens across the Coachella stage. Legends of Mexican music flicker into the digital ether, Peso Pluma sings through the roar of the crowd, and history feels like it is being rewritten in real time.
What most of us didn’t know is that this homage came together in the final hours of rehearsal. The man responsible for pulling it off—quietly, urgently, and with precision—is Adrián Martinez. As the co-founder of the creative agency STURDY, Martinez has become one of the defining voices in live music production, shaping moments for Bad Bunny, Peso Pluma, and Rauw Alejandro that will live in cultural memory.
In conversation with CREMA, Martinez spoke about the “accidents” that led him from journalism school to building some of the most iconic stages in Latin music, the risks that still keep him up at night, and the invisible creative decisions that shape the shows we think we know.
When asked about a creative decision that meant everything to him but slipped under the radar, Martinez immediately pointed to Peso Pluma’s Coachella 2023 finale.
“We started talking about creating this 3D tunnel that kinda went into infinity and allowed for all of these different people to be honored. So, you know, we had the likes of [Valentín] Elizalde and [Chalino] Sánchez and so many more,” Martinez recalled.
It was a decision made on instinct. The original plan didn’t land in rehearsal, so Martinez and his team pivoted. The result was a moment that looked like it took months of planning but was, in reality, an act of improvisation under pressure. “That was a really quick creative decision, and we had to make some very fast moves to figure out how to even make that happen,” he said.
Adrián Martinez didn’t set out to work in music. “I went to school for journalism. I never thought I’d work in such a heavy visual medium,” he explained. After graduation, he moved back to Los Angeles and began working on music videos with friends. That “accident” set him on a path that turned into a career.
“I love writing, but I think if I had to be honest with myself, I’m nowhere near the writer that a lot of my peers are. I found a lot of strength in the videos that I was making, the photos that I was making. It fired me up in a different way,” Martinez said.
Twelve years later, he’s directed music videos, worked across global tours, and become a go-to name for artists looking to tell stories that are bigger than their sound. “I’ve been able to wear multiple hats on different tours,” he said. “It’s been a happy accident. For sure.”
Martinez credits his father, a salesman, with shaping how he moves in the industry. “My dad has always been a salesman, and I think that taught me a lot. How he handled situations and conversations with clients…all that stuff is boring when you’re a kid, but it actually provided some training in my subconscious as I’ve gone through life.”
Because he didn’t train as a designer, Martinez says preparation became his survival tool. “I’ve had to really do the research and the work on my own in a lot of ways and be very well prepared,” he said. That ability to self-teach—whether through 3D renders or cultural research—now defines his process.
The live music industry is obsessed with bigger, brighter, louder. For Martinez, restraint is an equally powerful tool.
“Shows are about watching the man or the woman,” he said. “At the end of the day, people pay for the ticket to be in the same room as that person. Sometimes you just gotta turn everything off and have one spotlight on.”
Experience taught him where spectacle overshadows artistry. “Just doing more, adding more, keeping the screens on just because they’re there doesn’t help. It takes away,” he said. Every show, he explained, has to have an ebb and flow, a rhythm that lets silence and minimalism do as much work as the pyrotechnics.
Fans see the spectacle, but according to Adrián Martinez, the most surprising thing is how deeply artists like Bad Bunny, Peso Pluma, and Rauw Alejandro are involved.
“That’s what makes the difference with guys like this—how involved they are behind the scenes. I’ll bring the ideas, the storytelling, but I love being met with something that feels real to them and is them,” he said.
He pointed to Rauw Alejandro’s Saturno tour as an example. “We were sitting down for hours each week writing the script, going through the references, rehashing the story, the characters. He stayed later than a lot of his team. Some nights it would just be us sitting on the arena floor at one or 2:00 AM and working on things.”
That kind of collaboration, he said, is the reason the shows work. “Night after night, it works because of that.”
When asked what still scares him, Martinez didn’t hesitate. “Everything,” he said with a laugh. “I feel like with every show there’s more on the line. The scope of what the show is, and also what it aims to be or accomplish or mean to people—that is where I find anxiety, because I care so much.”
His insecurities don’t disappear with experience. “You really only know until you’re in the room and other people are watching. It exposes you in a lot of ways,” he said. But that risk is what makes the payoff worth it. “Now I get to stand in the room with 20,000 people, or if it’s a stadium show, with 80,000 people, and hear them react. That’s the feeling I value the most.”
At its core, Martinez’s job is to connect an artist to an audience. His expertise, he says, lies in translation. “My process is to listen, to take those things that are thrown my way, and turn them into something that becomes a viable set of moments, a story, and an overall show,” he said.
That humility—understanding the show is not about him—may be why his fingerprints are on the most iconic stages of Latin music today, even if the crowd never knows it.
