Bruce Lundvall, is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 record company executive, most known as being the President/CEO of the Blue Note Label Group, reporting directly to Eric Nicoli

Eric Nicoli

Eric Luciano Nicoli, CBE was CEO of EMI Group plc between January 12, 2007 and August 2007, having previously been Executive Chairman of the group since July 1999....

, the Chief Executive Officer of EMI Group.

Career

In a career spanning 48 years, Bruce Lundvall signed a wide array of artists, including Willie Nelson

Willie Nelson

Willie Hugh Nelson is an American country music singer-songwriter, as well as an author, poet, actor, and activist. The critical success of the album Shotgun Willie , combined with the critical and commercial success of Red Headed Stranger and Stardust , made Nelson one of the most recognized...

, Herbie Hancock

Herbie Hancock

Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock is an American pianist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet," Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound...

, Dexter Gordon

Dexter Gordon

Dexter Gordon was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and an Academy Award-nominated actor . He is regarded as one of the first and most important musicians to adapt the bebop musical language of people like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bud Powell to the tenor saxophone...

, James Taylor

James Taylor

James Vernon Taylor is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. A five-time Grammy Award winner, Taylor was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000....

, Stan Getz

Stan Getz

Stanley Getz was an American jazz saxophone player. Getz was known as "The Sound" because of his warm, lyrical tone, his prime influence being the wispy, mellow timbre of his idol, Lester Young. Coming to prominence in the late 1940s with Woody Herman's big band, Getz is described by critic Scott...

, Wynton Marsalis

Wynton Marsalis

Wynton Learson Marsalis is a trumpeter, composer, bandleader, music educator, and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Marsalis has promoted the appreciation of classical and jazz music often to young audiences...

, Dianne Reeves

Dianne Reeves

Dianne Reeves is an American jazz singer. She currently lives in Denver, Colorado.-Early life:Reeves was born in Detroit, Michigan to a very musical family. Her father, who died when she was two years old, was also a singer. Her mother, Vada Swanson, played trumpet. A cousin, George Duke, is a...

, Richard Marx

Richard Marx

Richard Noel Marx is an American adult contemporary and pop/rock singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer. He had a string of hit singles in the late 1980s and 1990s, including "Endless Summer Nights", "Right Here Waiting", "Now and Forever", and "Hazard"...

, Natalie Cole

Natalie Cole

Natalie Maria Cole , is an American singer, songwriter and performer. The daughter of jazz legend Nat King Cole, Cole rode to musical success in the mid-1970s as an R&B artist with the hits "This Will Be ", "Inseparable" and "Our Love"...

, Cassandra Wilson

Cassandra Wilson

Cassandra Wilson is an American jazz musician, vocalist, songwriter, and producer from Jackson, Mississippi. Described by critic Gary Giddins as "a singer blessed with an unmistakable timbre and attack [who has] expanded the playing field" by incorporating country, blues and folk music into her...

, Anita Baker

Anita Baker

Anita Baker is an American R&B/soul jazz singer-songwriter. To date, Baker has won eight Grammy Awards, and has four platinum albums and two gold albums to her credit....

 and Norah Jones

Norah Jones

Norah Jones is an American singer-songwriter and occasional actress.In 2002, she launched her solo music career with the release of the commercially successful and critically acclaimed album Come Away With Me, which was certified a diamond album in 2002, selling over 20 million copies...

. He heads the following labels: Blue Note Records

Blue Note Records

Blue Note Records is a jazz record label, established in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Max Margulis. Francis Wolff became involved shortly afterwards. It derives its name from the characteristic "blue notes" of jazz and the blues. At the end of the 1950s, and in the early 1960s, Blue Note headquarters...

 (jazz), Angel Records

Angel Records

Angel Records is a record label belonging to EMI. It was formed in 1953 and specialised in classical music, but included an occasional operetta or Broadway score...

 (classical), and Manhattan Records

Manhattan Records

Manhattan Records is a United States record label, owned by EMI and operates as a subsidiary of The Blue Note Label Group.-Company history:Manhattan Records was formed in 1984 by Bruce Lundvall, and was later renamed EMI Manhattan Records after absorbing EMI America Records imprint...

 (adult pop).

Lundvall began his music career in marketing at Columbia Records where he remained for 21 years, becoming President of the domestic division of CBS Records in 1976. In the course of his tenure, he built Columbia’s jazz roster into the largest of any major label.

In 1979, Bruce Lundvall organized and sponsored in Havana

Havana

Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...

, Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

, the historic Havana Jam

Havana Jam

Havana Jam was a three-day music festival that took place at the Karl Marx Theater, in Havana, Cuba, on 2-4 March, 1979. It was sponsored by Bruce Lundvall, the president of Columbia Records, Jerry Masucci, the president of Fania Records, and the Cuban Ministry of Culture.The festival included, on...

 festival that took place between 2–4 March, with Kris Kristofferson

Kris Kristofferson

Kristoffer "Kris" Kristofferson is an American musician, actor, and writer. He is known for hits such as "Me and Bobby McGee", "For the Good Times", "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", and "Help Me Make It Through the Night"...

, Rita Coolidge

Rita Coolidge

Rita Coolidge is a multiple Grammy Award-winning American vocalist. During the 1970s and 1980s, she charted hits on Billboard's Pop, Country, Adult Contemporary and Jazz charts.-Career:...

, Stephen Stills

Stephen Stills

Stephen Arthur Stills is an American guitarist and singer/songwriter best known for his work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash . He has performed on a professional level in several other bands as well as maintaining a solo career at the same time...

, the CBS Jazz All-Stars, the Trio of Doom

Trio of Doom

The Trio of Doom was a short-lived jazz fusion power trio consisting of John McLaughlin on guitar, Jaco Pastorius on bass, and Tony Williams on drums...

, Fania All-Stars

Fania All-Stars

The Fania All-Stars was a musical ensemble established in 1968 by the composer, Johnny Pacheco, as a showcase for the musicians on the record label Fania Records, the leading salsa record company of the time.-Beginnings:...

, Billy Swan

Billy Swan

Billy Lance Swan is an American songwriter and singer, best known for his 1974 single, "I Can Help".-Life:Swan was born in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. As a child, he learned drums, piano and guitar, and began writing songs...

, Bonnie Bramlett

Bonnie Bramlett

Bonnie Bramlett is an American singer and sometime actress known for her distinctive vocals in rock and pop music. This began in the mid 1960s as a backing singer, forming the husband-and-wife team of Delaney & Bonnie, and continuing to the present day as a solo artist.-Life and career:Bramlett...

, Mike Finnegan, Weather Report

Weather Report

Weather Report was an American jazz-rock band of the 1970s and early 1980s. The band was co-led by the Austrian-born keyboard player Joe Zawinul and the American saxophonist Wayne Shorter...

, and Billy Joel

Billy Joel

William Martin "Billy" Joel is an American musician and pianist, singer-songwriter, and classical composer. Since releasing his first hit song, "Piano Man", in 1973, Joel has become the sixth best-selling recording artist and the third best-selling solo artist in the United States, according to...

, plus an array of Cuban artists such as Irakere

Irakere

Irakere is a Cuban band founded by Armando de Sequeira Romeu Music Director and composer, and by pianist Chucho Valdés in 1973...

, Pacho Alonso

Pacho Alonso

Pacho Alonso was a Cuban singer and bandleader from Santiago de Cuba who is attributed with creating the musical form Pilón....

, Tata Güines

Tata Güines

Tata Güines was a Cuban percussionist on the tumbadora, or conga drum, as well as a composer. He was important in the first generation of Afro-Cuban jazz....

 and Orquesta Aragón

Orquesta Aragón

Orquesta Aragón was formed on 30 September 1939, by Orestes Aragón Cantero in Cienfuegos, Cuba. The band originally had the name Ritmica 39, then Ritmica Aragón before settling on its final form. Though they did not create the Cha-cha-cha, they were arguably the best charanga in Cuba during 1950s...

. Their performances are captured on Ernesto Juan Castellanos

Ernesto Juan Castellanos

Ernesto Juan Castellanos, born in 1963, is a freelance author, translator, journalist, filmmaker and researcher who lives and works in Havana, Cuba. In 1996, he started organizing the Cuban Beatles conventions, which opened doors to the world of writing...

's documentary Havana Jam '79

Havana Jam '79

Havana Jam ’79 is an hour-long documentary written, produced and directed in 2009 by Cuban author, journalist and filmmaker Ernesto Juan Castellanos....

, and on the two Columbia albums Havana Jam and Havana Jam II.

Lundvall moved to Elektra in 1982, where he became President of Elektra Records

Elektra Records

Elektra Records is an American record label owned by Warner Music Group. In 2004, it was consolidated into WMG's Atlantic Records Group. After five years of dormancy, the label was revived by Atlantic in 2009....

 and the newly created Elektra/Musician Jazz label.

In 1984, he was approached with an offer to create Manhattan, a pop music label based on the East Coast, for EMI, as well as to revive the legendary, long-suspended Blue Note jazz label. Lundvall accepted the challenge and has steered the label to unsurpassed heights, most recently through signing an unknown Norah Jones

Norah Jones

Norah Jones is an American singer-songwriter and occasional actress.In 2002, she launched her solo music career with the release of the commercially successful and critically acclaimed album Come Away With Me, which was certified a diamond album in 2002, selling over 20 million copies...

 who has since sold millions of her debut and follow-up albums, respectively Come Away With Me

Come Away with Me

Come Away with Me is the debut album of pianist and singer Norah Jones, released February 26, 2002 on Blue Note Records. Recording sessions for the album took place at New York City's Sorcerer Sound Studio and Shokan's Allaire Studios in 2001...

and Feels Like Home, all over the world.

Lundvall has served as chairman of the Recording Industry Association of America

Recording Industry Association of America

The Recording Industry Association of America is a trade organization that represents the recording industry distributors in the United States...

 (RIAA), Chairman of the Country Music Association

Country Music Association

The Country Music Association was founded in 1958 in Nashville, Tennessee. It originally consisted of only 233 members and was the first trade organization formed to promote a music genre...

 (CMA) and Director of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences

National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences

The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, Inc., known variously as The Recording Academy or NARAS, is a U.S. organization of musicians, producers, recording engineers and other recording professionals dedicated to improving the quality of life and cultural condition for music and its...

 (NARAS). He has received three Grammy nominations and a NARM presidential award.

Bruce Lundvall is an honored member of Board of Directors Advisory committee of The Jazz Foundation of America

Jazz Foundation of America

The Jazz Foundation of America is a non-profit organization based in Manhattan, New York founded in 1989. The JFA’s programs help jazz and blues musicians in need of emergency funds and connect them with performance opportunities in schools and the community...

.

Awards

• 1996 — Lifetime Achievement Award from the Jazz Foundation of America
  Jazz Foundation of America
  The Jazz Foundation of America is a non-profit organization based in Manhattan, New York founded in 1989. The JFA’s programs help jazz and blues musicians in need of emergency funds and connect them with performance opportunities in schools and the community...
  
  
• 1998 — Down Beat Lifetime Achievement Award
  Down Beat Lifetime Achievement Award
  Down Beat Magazine, the most prestigious Jazz publication, has been giving awards for Jazz performance since its inception.-Hall of Fame :The Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame is maintained at Universal Studios' City Jazz club in Orlando, Florida. Current membership, by year, is listed in the following...
  
  
• 2004 — MIDEM
  Midem
  -MIDEM:Short for Marché International du Disque et de l'Edition Musicale, MIDEM is the world's largest music industry trade fair, which has been held annually at and around the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, France, since 1967...
  
  Personality of the Year Award