Steven Paul Abbott is an English artist manager, concert promoter, live music agent, A&R executive and arts consultant.
[1][3] Abbott joined Luton punk band The Resistors in 1978, but renamed the group "UK Decay" after seeing the phrase used on the cover story of the Daily Mirror.
[4] They made one album, entitled For Madmen Only, and five singles[5] between 1979 and 1983, spending months in the UK Independent Charts, including the punk standard "For My Country".
Big Cat (UK) Records was also a leading label in ambient music in 1995 with releases from EAR, Paul Schutze, Pauline Oliveros, KJ Heino, and Thomas Koner.
Abbott opened a combined Bedlam Management / Big Cat (UK ) Records office at 580 Broadway, New York, in 1997.
Abbott started this classical label by signing John Tavener, and its debut release was the first recording of his Akathist of Thanksgiving with the Westminster Abbey Choir, James Bowman and Martin Neary.
Other recordings for the label included Benjamin Britten's A Ceremony of Carols, Gregorio Allegri's ⋅Miserere, John Tavener’s "Innocence", and "Adeste Fidelus - Christmas with Emma Kirkby", including artists Emma Kirkby, James Bowman, Martin Neary, Westminster Abbey Choir, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers, Alice Neary.
[12] The Good Life Experience Festival, Hawarden In partnership with his wife Cerys Matthews, and Caroline and Charlie Gladstone Abbot formed a new festival in 2014 centred on "The Great Outdoors", with activities such as bushcraft, lake swimming, axe throwing, trapeze, as well as international world music acts, DJs (Gilles Peterson, Norman Jay, Trevor Nelson), Heavenly Records, and authors and chefs ranging from Thomasina Miers, Helen Sharman, Michael Morpurgo, Michael Rosen, Ben Fogle.
With the help of mentors: composer Guy Chambers, jazz artist Soweto Kinch, MC/songwriter Ms Dynamite, broadcaster/singer/songwriter Cerys Matthews, and Abbott himself, a band of musicians, with "challenges" in life, worked through the series towards a live performance at Buckingham Palace in front of Prince Harry and an invited audience.