Siegfried Loch at ACT

Siegfried Loch was a top manager in pop music for 30 years, then founded the ACT record label, fulfilling a life-long dream: to become a jazz producer, as he tells Thomas Lindemann (Welt Online). He actually had planned to found that label in 1962 but then was contacted by Al Bennett, the owner of Liberty Records, a company which just had acquired the Blue Note label (founded by two expatriate Germans). Later he worked as European boss of Atlantic Records. Nobody understood his decision to quit that job in order to found his own little jazz label in 1992. With ACT he is independent; he only produces music he is convinced of. He was offered to release records by some established artists, but it's more fun to discover unknown artists and give them a chance. Loch has a lot of respect for Manfred Eicher, the other big German record boss, and his ECM label. There is a generation of young jazz musicians in Germany who can easily hold their own in Europe's jazz scene, musicians such as the trumpeter Till Brönner or the pianist Michael Wollny.