Roxanne Seeman

Roxanne Joy Seeman is an American songwriter and lyricist.

She is best known for her songs by Billie Hughes, Philip Bailey, Phil Collins, Earth, Wind & Fire, Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, The Sisters of Mercy, The Jacksons, Jacky Cheung, and in film and television.

She has two Emmy nominations.

Seeman is a writer and producer of the Japan Grand Prix Gold Disk Award for International Single of the Year "Welcome To The Edge" by Billie Hughes.

She has written songs for Chinese artists including Jacky Cheung, Yang Kun, Super Vocal, Rainie Yang and productions by Zhang Yadong and Gao Xiaosong.

Seeman is a producer of the Broadway shows To Kill a Mockingbird and The Waverly Gallery.

Seeman was born in New York to Jewish parents, Murray Seeman, a lawyer and real estate developer, and his wife, Lee (née Sachs).

Her father was a scholar, World War II veteran, and former mayor of Great Neck Estates, where they lived.

Thirty-three relatives of the Seeman family were killed in the Holocaust.

Her mother, a former member of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad, is of Israeli descent dating back to the 1800s on her paternal side and from the Getz family of jewelers on her maternal side.

At age 10, Seeman pursued piano lessons.

She took up violin at the Saddle Rock Elementary School and picked up guitar at 16.

During Seeman's high school years, she was an avid fine artist.

Seeman attended Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with the intention of pursuing a career in art.

In the practice rooms of Carnegie-Mellon, Seeman found a piano teacher and studied classical piano.

At Carnegie-Mellon, Seeman was on the School Activities Board, booking bands to perform on campus.

With a passion for jazz, Seeman attended a jazz theory class taught by Dr. Nathan Davis, Director of Jazz Studies at the University of Pittsburgh where she learned to play "Giant Steps", "Moment's Notice" and "Round Midnight".

Wishing to learn Chinese calligraphy, Seeman attended a class in Chinese language where she learned to write Chinese characters.

This motivated Seeman to apply as a transfer student to Columbia University in New York, where she would pursue Asian Studies and be in the music world in New York City.

While on Long Island, Seeman studied piano with Tony Aless, jazz pianist who played with Woody Herman, Charlie Parker, among others.

Seeman also took several lessons from Sir Roland Hanna.

Seeman is a graduate of Columbia University and Barnard College, with a B.A. in Oriental Studies, Chinese Arts and Language.

She studied Chinese, Japanese and Indian literature, art, and took a class on Chinese music from Professor Chou Wen-Chung.

Seeman spent nights in New York City jazz clubs while working as a temporary secretary at Atlantic Records and Warner Communications.

In between jobs, while lying on a dock over the Long Island Sound in Kings Point, she was inspired to write lyrics for jazz instrumentals.

In NY, she met David Lasley, a songwriter and session singer touring with James Taylor, who sang demos of her lyrics to the instrumentals.

Seeman relocated to Los Angeles in 1977 for a position at ABC Records, which was sold the next year to MCA Records.

In 1979 Dee Dee Bridgewater recorded Seeman's lyric version of the Ramsey Lewis instrumental "Tequila Mockingbird", composed by Larry Dunn of Earth, Wind & Fire and produced by George Duke.

This led to a collaboration with Philip Bailey of Earth, Wind & Fire, with whom she, Maurice White and Eddie del Barrio wrote "Sailaway", for Earth, Wind & Fire's Faces album.

During this time, she met Carmine Coppola and Italia Pennino and began a collaboration developing themes from Carmine's movie scores into songs, writing lyrics and producing song demos for the themes from The Black Stallion, The Outsiders, and Napoleon.

She began writing originals with David Lasley and other co-writers, producing 24-track recordings at ABC Recording Studios with David Benoit, Bobby Watson, Eduardo del Barrio, David Garibaldi, Doug Rodrigues, Terry Reid, Hubert Laws, Sylvia St. James, Arnold McCuller and ABC staff recording engineers Al Schmitt, Jr. and Zoli Osaze.

She met Gerry Brown, a young recording engineer and tape librarian at ABC.

He had mixed one of her songs and was listening so enthusiastically, she told him he could mix all of her songs.

While recording at ABC Recording Studios she met Jermaine Jackson and gave him a demo of the Eumir Deodato - Maurice White song "Tahiti Hut", an instrumental with her lyrics sung by David Lasley.

"Tahiti Hut" was recorded during the Jermaine Jackson Switch sessions along with the track Reaching For Tomorrow, co-written with Paul Jackson, Jr and Seeman.

In 1982, Seeman signed an exclusive writer agreement with Intersong Music, PolyGram Publishing.

While under contract, she wrote "Walking On The Chinese Wall" with Billie Hughes, which her publisher turned down as too unusual, giving her back the song.

Seeman has maintained her own publishing company, Noa Noa Music, named after the Tahitian words "noa noa" (fragrant scent) she used in a lyric.

Seeman's partnership with recording artist and songwriter/composer Billie Hughes, began in 1983 until his death in 1998.

"Reaching For Tomorrow" became the title track and "Tahiti Hut" remained unreleased until issued as a bonus track on an expanded digital edition of the album in 2019.