Siggi Loch is an exceptional figure in the European music scene: still active after 60 years in the business, he is one of the most experienced music managers and producers of the industry. Already in his mid-twenties he was appointed the youngest chairman of a record company, Liberty / United Artists in Munich, where he discovered artists like Katja Ebstein, Amon Düül II and CAN. At 30, he was appointed founding managing director of WEA Music, the German branch of the world's largest music group Warner Communication. But all along his heart belonged to jazz, combined with the desire to promote this music with his own label. But it would take some detours until he finally realized this dream. Although he already discovered and produced the saxophonist Klaus Doldinger at the age of 22, he also developed a feeling for the emerging "Beat" movement and produced his first recordings at the legendary Hamburg "Star Club" - with "The Searchers", "The Rattles", "Spencer Davis Group" or Jerry Lee Lewis. As head of WEA, he discovered and promoted international stars such as Al Jarreau or Helen Schneider as well as some of the most successful talents of the young German pop scene, such as Jürgen Drews, Marius Müller-Westernhagen, Peter Schilling, Joachim Witt, Heinz-Rudolf Kunze or the band “Ideal“. As a company manager, he finally made it to the position of president of WEA Europe INC. - certainly the highest position a German had reached in the music industry.
At the height of his success in the pop business, he ended this part of his career using the newly gained freedom to finally fulfill his life-long dream of his own, independent jazz label ACT. Since 1992 it has been one of the most important of its kind worldwide, with a focus on jazz and jazz-related music, especially from Germany and Europe. The careers of artists such as Nils Landgren, Esbjörn Svensson, Michael Wollny, Wolfgang Haffner, Marius Neset, Viktoria Tolstoy, Vijay Iyer, Vincent Peirani, Emile Parisien, Youn Sun Nah, Lars Danielsson, Nguyên Lê and many more are inextricably linked to ACT and Siggi Loch. The London TIMES recently summed it up: “Since 1992, the German label ACT has been building its own European union of musicians, fostering a freedom of movement between nationalities and genres and has given us an authentic impression of what the continent is about."
ACT productions have won numerous awards such as the annual German Record Critics' Award, the ECHO Jazz, the Victoires du Jazz, and several Grammy nominations, and continue to contribute significantly to the public perception of jazz as one of the most important genre-, culture- and regions-spanning “world music”. At a political level, Siggi Loch was the founding director of the German Phono Academy and director of the IFPI / Federal Association of the Phonographic Economy. Siggi Loch has been curating “Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic” since 2012 - one of the most successful jazz concert series in the German capital that still exists today. For his work as a supporter of music and arts, Siggi Loch was among others awarded the Federal Cross of Merit of Germany, the “Knight of the Swedish North Star Order 1st Class”, the „Royal Norwegian Order of Merit“, the „German Record Critics' Lifetime Achievement Award“, the „WDR Jazz Award“ and the „Skoda Jazz Award“ and ACT won the ECHO Jazz Audience Award four times in a row as label of the year.