Adam Sieff

I started out in my late teens as a guitar player in various bands while doing sessions for Island Records and Chappell Publishing. I set up Pebble Beach Sound Recorders on the West Sussex coast whose clients included Ian Dury, The Stranglers, Tim Hardin, The Adverts, Aswad, Penetration, Nick Lowe and Slade. 

During the 1980s I produced records for Wasted Youth, Matumbi, Big Country, Crown Of Thorns, Praying Mantis, Gary P. Nunn, Edoardo Bennato, Splodgenessabounds and Vision. I worked on many recording sessions, TV shows and commercials as a guitar player including Alexis Korner, Spitting Image, Whose Line Is It Anyway, Harry Enfield, Radioactive, KYTV and Who Dares Wins.

After a three year sabbatical running the jazz department at Tower Records’ UK flagship Piccadilly store, I left to run Sony Music’s newly opened Sony Jazz division, and over the next ten years worked with many of the greatest artists in the world including Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Herbie Hancock, Hugh Masekela, Béla Fleck, Angélique Kidjo, Martin Taylor, The Bad Plus, Clare Teal, Tower Of Power and Keb’ Mo’. I set up sonyjazz.net which was acknowledged as a pioneering music website that encouraged user-generated content and reviews by jazz fans.

Leaving Sony in 2005 I set up the consultancy Music Project Management and worked with SonyBMG, SellaBand, Dune Music, P3 Music, Nicolosi Productions and Jazz Cruises. I subsequently took a full time role as SellaBand’s Head of UK Operations and Head of Global A&R, recording over 30 albums with the pioneering direct to fan platform. 

In 2010 I joined the award-winning Dune Music and Tomorrow’s Warriors jazz education programme as Communications Director, working with Denys Baptiste, Jazz Jamaica, Nu Civilisation Orchestra and Abram Wilson. I also launched analogue recording company JazzLotion with longtime colleague and producer Tony Platt and began advising artists and companies how to develop their digital and social operating systems.