“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 Sharman is a professional songwriter, top liner, producer and musician. Her songs have been used for film, television and radio and she has had multiple releases both with other artists and on her own solo projects.
Jessica graduated from The Institute of Contemporary Music Performance (ICMP) with the Best Overall Songwriter Prize and now works across multiple genres and with a huge range of artists, writers and producers.
Jessica leads our elite young songwriters groups and special projects.
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.
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.
In September 2017 Megan set out to write and record her debut solo album with producer/songwriter Zak Lloyd in Nashville. The first single (‘Why I Need You’) was released in October 2017 and the video hit over 100,000 views in less than one month. The second single (‘Ghost of You’) was released January 2018 and has been described as ‘stunning’, and a ‘reminiscent, reflective, country-pop fusion’. The full album is set for release in June 2018.
Brendan Cleary
Brendan is a 22 year old 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”.
Brendan has supported acts like David Gray, Paddy Casey and Brian Kennedy to name a few. His time in Ireland has been invaluable to him as a singer/songwriter. It is clear in his music how influenced he has been by the Irish music scene.
Brendan has also worked with songwriters from; Alice Merton, Wideboys, Graham Henderson (Sinead O’Connor), Belen Arjona (Latin Grammy nominee), the TMS production team to writing for ‘Media set’, which reinforces his diversity as a Songwriter.
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.
Tali Trow
Tali has been a professional touring musician for close to a decade. He has worked on major label releases for Universal and Island Records, has toured internationally including shows in New York and Washington. He currently produces and plays live as part of Mercury Music nominee Gemma Hayes’ band. He plays double bass, guitar,mandolin and sings. He has been teaching since 2006 as a class room teacher, vocal coach, guitar and bass tutor working for Tower Hamlets, the Isle of Wight and privately.
Tali leads Song Academy Hampshire.
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.
Joe Armon-Jones
Joe is a pianist and composer recently finished a degree in jazz performance at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. Tutor at the National Youth Jazz Orchestra and plays with a number of bands including Sumochief, Kalichakra, Ezra, Situation and Big Beat Manifesto.
Joe is the songwriting assistant for our holiday workshops.
