We were delighted to welcome Grammy Award-winning artist, producer and innovator Imogen Heap to ICMP London last week.
Imogen was here to meet the winners of the international Song Academy Young Songwriter 2017 competition, which is run by our partners Song Academy, after she joined the judging panel this year.
Winners Sophie DeMasi (17) and Zachary Zbar (9) enjoyed working in ICMP’s new state of the art Audient Studio with our songwriting and instrumental tutors to produce high quality recorded versions of their finished songs.
The sessions were produced by BA Songwriting tutor Tim Elsenburg with BMus Programme Leader and professional drummer Rich Patterson, and professional bass player and instrumental tutor Ben Jones playing on the recordings.
Who are Song Academy?
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
As the leading young songwriters’ community, Song Academy work with songwriters aged 8-18 to help develop their creative and musical skills, how to express themselves, build confidence, have a voice, get their songs heard and provides expert feedback from professional songwriters. The Academy offers a range of after school clubs, holiday workshops, songwriting parties, written feedback on songs from experts in the music industry and the opportunity to enter the ‘Young Songwriter 2016’ competition – judges include Imogen Heap, Tom Odell, Fraser T Smith, Eg White & Rumer!
The Song Academy was founded by Rowena Atkins, an entrepreneur passionate about the creativity and power of young people. The inspiration came from Rowena’s eldest daughter Matilda, who recently started writing her own songs. 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
For music teachers, the academy provides the opportunity to enrich their music curriculum with songwriting workshops from professional songwriters. These workshops help to develop pupils’ creative lyric writing, improvisation of melodies, harmonies and rhythms and composition of instrumental parts. Improvisational and compositional techniques are explored at different levels depending on abilities. This is achieved through school workshops within the curriculum and also through running after-school clubs.
Song Academy nurtures the talent of young people set on being the next generation of songwriters or being dynamic leaders in other creative industries. In addition to a fantastic group of songwriters, experienced teachers and music industry professionals, many ICMP graduates also support the work of the Song Academy.
How does ICMP London work with Song Academy?
We are proud to be associated with this great organisation, supporting their work. Many of Song Academy’s staff have strong associations with ICMP London. For example, Songwriting graduate Jessica Sharman contributed to Song Academy’s curriculum design with Head of Songwriting, Sophie Daniels providing advice and mentoring. We are involved with the annual Young Songwriter Competition, providing judges and recording the winning songs in one of ICMP London’s high-quality studios with an experienced professional producer.