Adam Holzman was born on February 15, 1958, in New York City, the son of Jac Holzman, the founder of Elektra Records. He grew up in California and started classical piano lessons at twelve, but his first musical loves were the Doors, Leon Russell and Dr. John, followed by Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Yes, and then the jazz-rock of Chick Corea, the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Billy Cobham. By his own account he did not get serious about jazz harmony until his late twenties. In the late 1970s he co-founded the Los Angeles jazz-rock band the Fents with guitarist Ted Hall and bassist Doug Hodges; the group's records include First Offense (1983) and The Other Side (1987, Passport Jazz), which Holzman produced. In 1983 he played synthesizer on Ray Manzarek's recording of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana.

In 1985 the singer and producer Randy Hall, who had noticed him while he was working in a Los Angeles music store, brought him into sessions for Miles Davis. Davis took him on for keyboard work around the Tutu sessions and then as second keyboardist in his touring band. On Tutu (1986) he is credited with additional synthesizer programming alongside producer Marcus Miller, and with a synthesizer solo on "Splatch." He stayed until October 1989, played more than 200 concerts with Davis, and in late 1988, when Robert Irving III left, was promoted to musical director. He appears on the live compilation Live Around the World (1996), which he also helped compile, on The Complete Miles Davis at Montreux box set, and on the DVD That's What Happened: Live in Germany 1987. Later he worked with the saxophonist Bob Belden on the six-CD set The Cellar Door Sessions 1970 (Columbia/Legacy, 2005), and won a Jazz Journalists Association award for co-producing it.

After leaving Davis he joined Michel Petrucciani, who asked him in 1989 to work together. Holzman played synthesizer on Petrucciani's Music (1989) and was co-arranger, synthesizer player and programmer on Playground (1991, Blue Note), where he also wrote one piece and the rhythm section was bassist Anthony Jackson and drummer Omar Hakim; the Metz concert album Live (recorded November 1991, released 1994) also carries his keyboards. In the same years he played on Bob Belden's Sting and Prince tribute albums, worked with Chaka Khan and Robben Ford, and produced Steps Ahead's Vibe (1995) with Mike Mainieri. In the fall of 1995 he toured in Wayne Shorter's band, and his arrangement and synthesizer programming appear on one track of Lenny White's Present Tense (1995).

His own records began with In a Loud Way, recorded May 4 to 11, 1991, at the Power Station in New York with Kenny Garrett, Dennis Chambers, bassist Darryl Jones, percussionist Mino Cinelu and guitarist Jimi Tunnell, and released by Manhattan. He then built a working band, first called Mona Lisa Overdrive and renamed Brave New World, usually with saxophonist Aaron Heick, bassist Freddy Cash Jr. and guitarist Mitch Stein. The albums credited to him, his band or the Adam Holzman Band include Overdrive (1994), Manifesto (1995), The Big Picture (1997), Rebellion (2001), the live Neon Beef Thermometer: Live in New York (2004), Jazz Rocket Science (2005, Nagel-Heyer) and Spork (2010). From 1997 until Washington's death in December 1999 he toured and recorded with Grover Washington Jr., and he made three albums with trumpeter Wallace Roney: No Room for Argument (2000), Prototype (2004) and Mystikal (2005).

In the fall of 2011 he joined Steven Wilson's band for the tour behind Grace for Drowning and has been the keyboardist on Wilson's records and tours since, among them The Raven That Refused to Sing (And Other Stories) (2013), Hand. Cannot. Erase. (2015), To the Bone (2017), The Future Bites (2021), The Harmony Codex (2023) and The Overview (2025), and he was in the band for the 2025 tour behind that last album. The Deform Variations (2015) collects his improvisations on Wilson's "Deform to Form a Star," recorded live on the 2013 tour. With Wilson's bandmates Nick Beggs and Craig Blundell he formed the trio Trifecta, which released Fragments (Kscope, 2021) and The New Normal (2024). His own albums of the period, Truth Decay (2018), The Last Gig (recorded live at Nublu 151 in New York on March 12, 2020, and released in 2021) and the largely electronic Zombie Apocalypse (2025), keep one foot in jazz-rock.

Holzman is based in New York and is married to the guitarist Jane Getter, whose albums Jane (1997), Three (2012) and On (2015) he produced. As of November 2026 he is listed as a part-time associate teaching professor in the jazz program at The New School, where his courses for the fall 2026 term include an Electric Miles Ensemble and an Improvisation Ensemble, and a Progressive Rock Ensemble is scheduled for spring 2027. His son Russell Holzman plays drums and electronic percussion on several of his records.

Holzman is a fusion keyboardist in the line of Chick Corea and Jan Hammer: Moog and other analog synthesizer leads, Fender Rhodes and Hammond textures, and funk-driven grooves over rock-sized rhythm sections, with piano used for the quieter and more harmonically open moments. His official biography cites Pulse! magazine's fusion-category polls, a Down Beat review that praised his "killer groove" and compared him to Hammer, and a Keyboard magazine nomination for best electric jazz keyboard player. His years with Miles Davis shaped his approach to running a band: he has said he learned patience from watching Davis let a weak new piece develop on stage. He has also been candid that he does not see himself as a keeper of jazz tradition and aims for entertaining music drawn from rock, jazz-rock, funk and other styles. That places him at the edge of jazz: the albums of the Brave New World years, his work with Michel Petrucciani, Wallace Roney and Grover Washington Jr., and his Miles Davis projects are jazz and jazz-fusion records, many on jazz labels, while since 2011 his most visible role has been in Steven Wilson's progressive rock band and in Trifecta. Much of his current solo work lives between jazz, ambient music and progressive rock, and he teaches both a Miles Davis ensemble and a progressive rock ensemble at The New School.