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ACT is a German
record label "Big Three" music labels A record label or record company is a brand or trademark of Sound recording and reproduction, music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a Music publisher, ...
founded in 1992 by Siegfried Loch. It is a division of ACT Music + Vision founded by Loch and Annette Humpe in 1988. ACT started as a pop music label but folded soon after it started. Loch turned it into a jazz label, at first reissuing music he had recorded for Liberty, Philips, and WEA before turning to new recordings. ACT's first release was the album ''Jazzpaña'' by Vince Mendoza and Arif Mardin and featured Michael Brecker, Al Di Meola, and
Steve Khan Steve Khan (born Steven Harris Cahn; April 28, 1947) is an American jazz guitarist. Career Steven Harris Cahn was born in Los Angeles. His father, lyricist Sammy Cahn, "loved to hear any and all versions of his songs". He took piano lessons as a ...
. Though it earned two Grammy nominations, the artist that brought ACT Music to international attention was Swedish jazz pianist Esbjörn Svensson, along with his collaborators Magnus Öström and Dan Berglund, who together formed e.s.t. e.s.t. released a string of acclaimed albums on ACT Music and are considered to have been highly influential on modern jazz music, as well as commercially successful. Though their commercial success in Europe was not replicated in the US, their impact was nevertheless such that they became the first European jazz musicians to feature on the cover of ''
DownBeat ''DownBeat'' (styled in all caps) is an American music magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond", the last word indicating its expansion beyond the jazz realm that it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1 ...
''. ACT was voted Label of the Year in the German Echo Jazz online poll four times in a row from 2010 to 2013.


Roster

ACT artists include Marius Neset, Bugge Wesseltoft, Lars Danielsson, Viktoria Tolstoy, Vijay Iyer, Leszek Mozdzer, Iiro Rantala, Nils Landgren and Esbjörn Svensson Trio. Also: Esbjörn Svensson, Rigmor Gustafsson, and Ulf Wakenius. Artists contracted from other countries are the Norwegian saxophonists Geir Lysne, Tore Brunborg, Frøy Aagre, violinist Henning Kraggerud, the band In The Country, the Swedish pianist Jacob Karlzon, the Danish vocalist Cæcilie Norby, the Belgian guitarist
Philip Catherine Philip Catherine (born 27 October 1942) is a Belgian jazz rock guitarist. Biography Philip Catherine was born in London, England, to an English mother and Belgian father, and was raised in Brussels, Belgium. His grandfather was a violinist i ...
, the Austrian pianist David Helbock, the French drummer Manu Katché. German musicians on the label include Christian Muthspiel, Joachim Kühn, Christof Lauer, Wolfgang Haffner, and Michael Wollny (winner of the ECHO Jazz award in 2010 for best instrumentalist, piano/keyboards). ACT has recorded
Nguyên Lê Nguyên Lê (Vietnamese: ''Lê Thành Nguyên''; born 14 January 1959) is a French jazz musician and composer of Vietnamese ancestry. His main instrument is guitar, and he also plays bass guitar and guitar synthesizer. He has released albums ...
and Youn Sun Nah (winner of the Echo Jazz award in 2011 for best singer internationally), Jasper van't Hof, Simon Nabatov, and Paolo Fresu.


Discography


References


External links


Official website
{{Authority control German jazz record labels Record labels established in 1992