‘Express Yourself & Be Heard’
“Song Academy is a ‘force for good’ providing young songwriters with a golden opportunity to showcase their music and get invaluable feedback from some of the best British songwriters at a really formative time in their development”. Myles Keller, PRS for Music
Are you a songwriter aged 8-18? Develop creative & musical skills, express yourself, build confidence, have a voice, get your songs heard & receive expert feedback from professional songwriters!
What we offer: After school clubs, holiday workshops, songwriting parties, written feedback on your songs from experts in the music industry and enter our Young Songwriter 2016 competition – judges include Tom Odell, Fraser T Smith, Eg White & Rumer!
Are you a music teacher? Enrich your music curriculum programme with songwriting workshops from professional songwriters. Workshops develop pupils’ creative lyric writing, improvisation of melodies, harmonies & rhythms and composition of instrumental parts. Improvisational and compositional techniques are explored at different levels depending on abilities.
What we offer: School workshops within the curriculum and after-school clubs
Are you a professional songwriter? Join our team!
Are you a potential corporate partner? Sponsor our activities to develop young peoples creative & musical talents and be inspired to achieve their dreams.
Rowena Atkins
An entrepreneur passionate about the creativity and power of young people. The inspiration for Song Academy came from Rowena’s eldest daughter Matilda, who recently started writing her own songs. Song Academy nurtures the talent of young people set on being the next generation of songwriters or being dynamic leaders in other creative industries.
Rowena has a background in old and new media at The Economist, Financial Times, The Guardian and United Business Media. Rowena started her career as a Chartered Accountant, moving swiftly into sales & marketing and launching & developing online businesses.
Jessica Sharman
Jessica is a professional songwriter, topliner, producer and musician.
Her songs have been used worldwide for film (The Inbetweeners 2), TV (Made In Chelsea, Saving Hope) and advertising (Burberry).
She‘s had multiple radio plays, including consecutive weeks spent on Radio 2’s A & B list with artists like Ward Thomas and Hannah Grace, as well as plays on Radio 1 and Radio X, most recently with Irish artist Áine Cahill.
She co-wrote over a third of the Ward Thomas’ second album Cartwheels, which went straight to Number 1 making UK Music History by being the first Country album to reach top of the charts. She worked with them on their third record, Restless Minds, on which she co-wrote 6 tracks.
Hannah Rose Platt
Hannah is an acclaimed singer-songwriter, talented guitarist and storyteller. She has toured extensively in the UK and USA and recorded with Grammy Award-winning musicians. Her songs have often been played on radio and TV.
She has just finished recording her second album with AMAUK Instrumentalist of the Year Nominee, Thomas Collison. Her latest video ‘Chanel and Cigarettes’ debuted on SKY and Freeview TV, she also performed live on BBC One and was named as a rising independent star on the Americana scene in ‘Billboard’ magazine.
Her debut album, Portraits was released in 2015 to widespread critical acclaim. Recorded in Nashville, Tennessee, Portraits features some of the industry’s leading names, including Grammy award-winning musicians. It received widespread airplay on BBC Radio, Resonance FM, Amazing Radio, and Europe’s leading country radio station CMR Nashville. The song ‘1954’ was featured several times in the TV soap Hollyoaks and Hannah was invited to the home of legendary BBC presenter, Bob Harris, to film an Under the Apple Tree Session for Whispering Bob TV.
Scarlet Billham
Scarlet is a professional musician, songwriter and actor. Scarlet graduated from The BRIT School of Performing Arts and now performs as a musician across the country.
Scarlet has gained a ton of support from BBC Introducing which led to her signing with a top agent at Primary Talent. After her signing she has supported Ward Thomas on their sell out tour, played Secret Garden Party, Hit The North, Live at Leeds festival to name but a few. She also works with Ninja Music as a songwriter.
She had showcases in L.A and writing sessions on the famous Music Row in Nashville. She has also just signed with management and is gearing up to release a whole new range of material.
Adam Gillian
Adam is a songwriter and actor born in Lisburn, Co. Armagh, Northern Ireland. He was awarded a prestigious scholarship to study BA Musical Theatre at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and then studied MA Songwriting at The Institute of Contemporary Music & Performance.
He is also known for performing with the band ‘Mondegreen Trio’.
Nadine Furer
Nadine Furer is a Swiss singer-songwriter and graphic designer, currently working on her own artist project NADINE, alongside collaborations with other artists and producers. With degrees both in songwriting and visual arts, sound and vision are inextricably linked for Nadine. “I always try to bring multiple dimensions to my music,” she says. “Images are, for me, a natural part of the process.”
She moved to London in 2011 to study at ICMP and became a fixture on the city’s gigging scene, playing at venues such as The Bedford, Hoxton Underbelly, and The Regal Room.
Oscar Laurence
Oscar started his musical education on classical guitar and from a young age he became interested in writing, singing and playing music in a broad range of style. At the age of 22 he has recently finished a degree in jazz performance at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, where he studied with some of the greatest jazz musicians in Europe. Oscar plays guitar and sings with many different groups and has performed at renowned venues such as Royal Festival Hall, Ronnie Scott’s, The Roundhouse and The Vortex. He is currently writing and producing material for an album to be released this year.
Oscar leads our after school sessions in Hammersmith various holiday workshops and school workshops.
Megan O’Neill
Irish-born singer/songwriter Megan O’Neill is one of the most exciting Americana artists on the UK scene. A long-time musician and songwriter, Megan has previously lived in Nashville but now resides full time in London.
She released her debut EP ‘Coming Home’ in May 2015, reaching #1 in Irish charts & was awarded ‘UK EP of the Year’ (W21Music). In February 2017, Megan released a second record with her band ‘The Common Threads’ titled ‘Stories to Tell’ which was recorded at Mark Knopfler’s British Grove Studios with the legendary Guy Fletcher (Dire Straits, Roxy Music, Mark Knopfler) producing.
Megan has had her song ‘Don’t You’ featured on hit ABC TV Show Nashville, three slots at the O2 Arena London for C2C festival, a performance at JJ Abrams’ Oscar Wilde party in LA alongside Gavin James, multiple appearances at the prestigious Bluebird Café in Nashville, Harvest Festival and Nashville Meets London Festival. She has also been twice chosen as one of Time Out London’s Rising Stars (2016 and 2017).
In 2017 Megan was selected as one of the top 8 Americana songwriter’s in the UK and performed at the Americana Music Awards in London. She also spent 2017 touring Ireland, America and the UK and sharing stages with such artists as Miranda Lambert, Kip Moore, Nathan Carter, Donna Taggart and Victoria Shaw.
Brendan Cleary
Brendan is a singer/songwriter who’s career has seen him write and gig across the UK and Europe. Moving to London at the age of 18, Brendan has spent time honing his craft in both Ireland and the Lake District, where his home was always filled with the likes of The Beatles, The Eagles, Simon & Garfunkel and James Taylor, all of whom he cites as big inspirations for his musical style. Since moving to the capital, Brendan worked tirelessly to improve his stature as a music artist and songwriter; enrolling on to BIMM London’s Songwriting course, joining the infamous London gig circuit and enjoying regular airplay on BBC Introducing and local independent radio stations.
One of his promoters in London has been quoted as saying: “He offers a wide variety of thoughtful and well-written original music that sparks emotion in the audience” as well as “Everything he does is believable and makes you really want to listen to what he is saying”.
Charlotte Harding
Charlotte Harding is a composer, saxophonist and producer based in London. She graduated from the Royal College of Music studying composition with Mark-Anthony Turnage.
Charlotte has written songs since she was 11 and has worked with various songwriters including Fiona Bevan, Ed Hardcourt and Guy Farley. She currently writes and plays with her two sisters in their folk/pop band ‘Isla’ and writes music for media with her work featuring on the Discovery channel and various adverts.
Charlotte currently leads our holiday workshops and special projects.
Lilli Unwin
Lilli is currently in her fourth and final year at Trinity Laban studying jazz voice with Brigitte Beraha; other mentors include Nia Lynn, Pete Churchill, Trudy Kerr, Phil Peskett, Simon Purcell and Nick Weldon.
Ensemble experience includes singing with Tomorrow’s Warriors Big Band, TrinityLaban Jazz Choir and an Andrew Sisters influenced jazz vocal trio ‘The Doodlebugs’.
She is currently leading her own band and exploring songwriting and arranging. Lilli is the songwriting leader at our Hammersmith after school sessions, various holiday workshops and school workshops.
Robbie Boyd
Robbie Boyd has performed live on ITV’s ‘This Morning’ twice, written a song with the legendary Ray Davies and been regularly aired on BBC Radio 2 by the likes of Graham Norton and Jeremy Vine. He’s just released this year’s highly praised debut album, ‘So Called Man’, produced and mixed by Tristan Ivemy (Frank Turner, Magic Numbers). Robbie’s forthcoming single, ‘Brave’, is a stand-out track with a catchy melody that exudes life and positivity, and demonstrates Robbie’s versatile vocals along with his band’s powerful folk-driven groove.
Robbie is the songwriting assistant for one of our elite young songwriters group.
Greg Evain
Greg started performing around the age of 9, playing the organ in church. He developed a passion for boogie woogie, ragtime, and later on jazz.
His academic training started at Nantes Conservatoire, and the Catholic University of the West in Angers (Music Degree with honors in 2013). Greg develops a taste for singing through Gospel, jazz, and pop music. He writes his own songs and composes original songs. He loves playing with singers and always enjoys composing and arranging for them.
In France, Greg played in many festivals such as “les rendez-vous de l’Erdre” and “les nuits du jazz” in Nantes “Terre blanche” and “face et si” in the west of France, “Jazz’y Krampouezh” at Pont-Aven. He released his first solo album “all better now” in 2012, 100% auto produced and recorded at home in Nantes.
He is now based in London, studying at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance on a Masters course “jazz piano performance” under the supervision of Simon Purcell.
Samir Elshay
Samir Elshay started his music career at seventeen when he studied for music performance and business A levels at south Thames college. He went on the following year to achieve a higher diploma in popular music performance and songwriting and graduated in 2010. Samir has since been working as a professional songwriter, writing for established and up and coming talent internationally. Samir is currently writing new material for his EP which he is releasing soon.
Samir is the songwriting assistant for one of our elite young songwriters groups.
Christina Clunies-Ross
Christina, performing as ‘Stina’ is an English singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist with a distinctive folk/pop sound. Her debut EP ‘Call the Guard’ has has been played on BBC radio through BBC Introducing and she is currently working on her 2nd EP which is due for release in March.
Christina studied singing, cello and piano at Chethams School of Music in Manchester before gaining a scholarship to attend The Royal College of Music, graduating in 2011 with a BMus Honours degree.
Christina leads various holiday workshops.
Eden Tredwell
Eden studied songwriting at the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance. She is a classically trained singer with a lot of experience in choral work and working with children. She also has a strong background in musical theatre as part of the Royal Borough Youth Opera, and in jazz, singing with jazz orchestras and workshops with the Laurie Holloway Trio. She is currently developing her own writing and collaborating with young artists.
Eden leads various holiday workshops.
