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Adam was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa. He began playing piano by ear at the age of three. By sixteen he was performing live professionally, and by eighteen he was the musical director for P.J. Powers, South Africa’s biggest selling female artist, touring throughout Africa and the United Kingdom. During this time he was commissioned, along with P.J., to compose the election campaign song for Nelson Mandela’s ANC Party for the first free elections in South Africa in 1994. The song, Now is the Time, was performed at President Mandela’s historic inauguration ceremony. During the four years he acted as P.J. Power’s musical director, Adam performed and recorded with all of South Africa’s major recording artists as well as acting as musical director for countless musical and industrial theatre productions. He also opened his first recording studio and began recording and producing local artists, which of course, made him a complete “gear head”! Adam relocated to Los Angeles to attend The Musicians Institute. After three months in LA he started working as a recording and mix engineer for composer Dan Licht (Dexter) that sparked a new direction in his compositions - music for picture. In 2000 he found himself walking through the doors of Machine Head Music and Sound Design where he was offered the post of in-house engineer and soon worked his way up to becoming the company’s Lead Composer. He has composed for countless spots such as: Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Cadillac, Chevy, Chrysler, Cisco, Coke, Cook's Ham, Dodge, Energizer, Excedrin, Farmers Insurance, Ford, Franklin Templeton, GM, Heineken, Honda, Hoover, HP, Jeep, Jose Cuervo, Kaiser Permanente, Kenmore, Las Vegas Tourism, Lincoln Financial, Mattel Barbie, Mattel Polly Pockets, Medical City, Mitsubishi, MTV, Negra Modelo, Nike, Nissan, Pepsi, Pirelli, Red Bull, San Diego Tourism, Scion, Shell, Suzuki, Toyota, Wal-Mart, Whiskers, Xbox, and many others. In 2006, Adam composed the score for the Pirelli short film The Call for Leo Burnett Italy (directed by Antoine Fuqua starring John Malkovich.) Adam subsequently scored Pirelli’s 2007 short, The Game (directed by Kathryn Bigelow starring Uma Thurman.) Adam scored much of the film Pool Hall Prophets (Freddie Prinze Jr., Ving Rhames.) His film and video game contributions include: Blind Horizon with Val Kilmer (Lions Gate Films), The Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions (Warner Bros.), Full Spectrum Warriors video game (Pandemic & THQ), and acclaimed documentary 51 Birch Street (HBO/Cinemax). Adam songs which have been featured in films include: Lose Control and Take My Hand for Raise Your Voice (Hilary Duff); Never Again and If You Wouldn’t Be Mine for Edison (Kevin Spacey, Morgan Freeman and Justin Timberlake) and Forgiveness, Jamie Smiles (co-written with H. Scott Salinas), and Love from Afar for Just Friends (Anna Faris, Ryan Reynolds, Amy Smart.) Adam’s songwriting skills have also crossed over to commercials. His song, Where’d You Get That, launched Mattel’s new Barbie Fashion Fever Doll in 2004 worldwide in commercials featuring Hilary Duff. In 2005, Mattel signed teen-singer Skye Sweetnam to perform lead vocals on Adam’s song as they continued on with the successful campaign. Schiff has also worked on numerous remixes of artists such as Seal, The Flaming Lips and Jill Scott. One of Adam’s highlights from 2008 was working with Michael Jackson in Vegas, remixing his Thriller track for the Sobe Super Bowl spot, which was produced by The Arnell Group and starred Naomi Campbell. Sitting down with the original multi-tracks of Thriller was paradise! Since leaving Machine Head in July 2008, Adam has co-written both songs and score for the documentary Goal for Life for The Global Oneness Project; scored a visual documentary about Bhutan for Aine Carey and David Emery and has recently completed a Windows spot. |
