Martin Sutton
FOUNDER & LEAD INSTRUCTOR
Founder of The Songwriting Academy
Multi-platinum award winning Martin Sutton has over three decades of success in the music business as a full time songwriter, producer, engineer, mixer and multi-instrumentalist. He founded The Songwriting Academy 10 years ago and has since helped thousands of songwriters around the world leap forward with their music.
Martin has worked with some of the biggest artists in the world including Celine Dion, Backstreet Boys, LeAnn Rimes, Katrina & The Waves, Des’Ree, Kim Wilde, Gary Barlow, Mica Paris, Blue, Andrew Roachford, Mike & The Mechanics, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, Super Junior, Sir Cliff Richard, Olivia Newton John, Garou, Pixie Lott, Michael Patrick Kelly, Lulu, Lena, plus multiple Voice and Idol winners around the world.
Martin owns a sync agency and works closely with music supervisors to provide music for movies, TV shows and video games.
He is also an Amazon best-selling author of the spiritual guide : Conversations With Nishu.
Jez Ashurst
Ne-Yo, Leona Lewis, Jason Derulo, Gabrielle Aplin & more
Jez Ashurst is a multi-platinum songwriter/producer based in London, who has also worked in the USA, Scandinavia, Germany and Japan.
His early career spanned work as an engineer to session guitar work and composing for TV. The last couple of years have seen Jez write cuts for (and with) Will Young, Mel C, Boyzone, Joe McElderry and many other established and new UK acts.
His track record includes the iTunes No.1 “One More Sleep” (Leona Lewis),“Love Will Save The Day” (Boyzone), “Loving You” (Matt Cardle & Mel C) and “Panic” (Gabrielle Aplin). Jez has added his guitar and programming skills to hit records from Susan Boyle and Il Divo, as well as a Number One for Little Mix, and he was one of the team behind the music for the 2011 and 2013 X Factor. He particularly likes developing new talent and has a wealth of experience as a songwriting and production coach.
In 2016 Jez hit the UK Top 10 with Jason Derulo and Little Mix performing his song "Secret Love Song".
Paul Statham
Dido, Kylie, Matt Cardle, Gabriella Cilmie & more
Paul Statham is a multi platinum selling songwriter and producer who has been published by Warner Chappell Music for over 25years. Paul co-wrote with Dido the breakthrough single “Here With Me” and the title track of her first album No Angel, selling over 25 million records.
Paul also wrote two tracks on Kylie’s massive album “Fever” Kylie as well as songs for The Saturdays, Matt Cardle, Gabriella Cilmie, Peter Andre, Rachel Stevens, Right Said Fred, Tina Arena and many European acts inc the Italian artist Noemi (recent album “Made in London was a no 1 record in Italy ). He has also worked with more left field artists, Simple Minds, 7 albums with former Bauhaus vocalist Peter Murphy, 2 albums with Mercury prize nominated Helicopter Girl.
Paul spends a lot of time developing new artists/writers for Warner Chappell including writer Ed Drewett (1D, The Wanted). Paul also lectures at Solent on popular song writing, BIMM London & Leeds College of Music where he is a visiting Professor.
https://www.paulstatham.com/about
Listen to some of Paul's work here:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5VnP8AVEk4b6W9NZpqigps?si=cba5fe08ee5e4b9c
Sie Medway-Smith
U2, David Guetta, Rita Ora & more
Sie is a highly acclaimed music producer/songwriter/engineer and educator who has worked within an extensive network of industry talent for over 20 years including artists such as Rita Ora, David Guetta U2, Chemical Brothers, Ellie Goulding and many more. He is known for his highly innovative style of production and is a well know developer for Ableton Live software.
Lee Dannay
John Mayer, Trey Lorenz, Train & more
Lee Dannay has over twenty five years experience in the music industry, including 15 years at Sony Music, as a senior A&R executive for both Epic and Columbia Records, plus five years at Warner/Chappell Music Publishing. While at Sony, Lee signed, developed and worked with a variety of artists including John Mayer, Shawn Mullins, Five For Fighting, Anna Nalick and General Public.
Lee also worked as a senior music producer for America’s Got Talent, involved in casting and artist development for the music talent portion of the show, and as an executive producer for the artists subsequently signed.
Through her own creative consulting company, GoodWorks Music, Inc., Lee maintains the role of Creative Director and founding member of a music therapy initiative called Knock Out Noise, which researches and creates music and musical templates for disorders related to sensory processing.
Currently, Lee is head of A&R for Nashville based entertainment company Thirty Tigers, responsible for signing artists, providing A&R services for the roster as needed, and assisting with the development of the Thirty Tigers publishing venture.
Additionally, Lee is an adjunct professor at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, teaching the Business of Music Publishing and is a voting member of The Recording Academy.
Ally McErlaine
Guitarist for world famous band Texas
Ally Mcerlaine is best known as the notable lead guitarist in the multi million selling Scottish band Texas. Growing up in Glasgow in the eighties Ally had gained celebrity amongst his peers as a guitarist in demand and at 17, along with a young Sharleen Spiteri and Johnny Mcelhone formed the ever successful group Texas .
Texas first album Southside heavily featured Ally’s bluesy atmospheric slide guitar which influenced a whole genre of Americana music in the UK and saw him hailed as “the nations classiest guitarist “ in GuitaristMagazine.
Outside of the constant touring and album making that Texas bring, in recent years Ally has also toured and guested on many a project with friends and musicians as diverse as Rufus Wainwright, Sheryl Crow, John Mellancamp, Steve Earle, Boy George, Mick Jagger, Jack Savoretti, Dave Stewart, Wu Tan Clan, 10cc, Tom Jones, amongst many others .
In 2005 Ally and his wife Shelly Poole a very successful songwriter formed the heavily synched indie Americana band Red Sky July. All self written and produced they have released 4 albums each entering the Official Country Charts in the top 3, have played 5 headline tours around the country and also won the Nordoff Robbins Inspiration Award in 2016.
Deciding to take a little break from constant touring, in the last year Ally has produced the Eno inspired ambient soundtrack for the Official TriYoga film, also composed music for a Luc Besson drama and is currently working on instrumental music for a feature film directed by Jono Mcleod.
2019 saw the release of Ally’s own guitar collection called Callisto built from the layered swells and ambient textures inspired by the TriYoga composition. The album has been highly praised in the music press and is just the start of many other personal musical endeavours for Ally.
Paddy Byrne
Snakehips, Paloma Faith, Ella Eyre, Tom Grennan & more
Paddy Byrne is a multi million selling British songwriter, musician and producer known for working in a variety of genres with multi platinum and developing artists alike such as Snakehips, Paloma Faith, Ella Eyre, Tom Grennan, Olly Murs, Will Young, Gabrielle, Sinead Harnett, Daley, Devlin, Felon, Watermat, I Blame Coco and Mononoke.
His focus is always on the song, the artist’s vision and their vocal. He is as accomplished when writing and producing an entire song as he is writing lyrics and top line for other productions.
Paddy started his professional career writing and singing in his band ‘Byrne’ gaining widespread acclaim for their self produced album ‘Slowly & Gloriously’, receiving unanimously positive reviews including 9/10 in NME, 4/5 UNCUT and 5/5 Observer Music Monthly.
Following the birth of his first son he stopped touring and set up his studio and began co-writing and producing. His journey from the indi scene as an artist to co-creating in more commercial genres was immediately successful working with Will Young on four songs for his album ‘Let It Go’. His experience as a lead singer and writer gives him a deep affinity with artists and a love of vocal expression and lyric.
He has written and produced many multi platinum selling songs and is currently working with a wide variety of established and up and coming artists, writers and producers.
Charlie Grant
Simply Red, Rooster, Mel C, Michael Patrick Kelly & more
Multi-platinum songwriter Charlie Grant got his first break in music while working in an Organic food store in London’s Notting Hill, with regular customers like Brian Eno, The Edge, PJ Harvey and other luminaries of the music world. It was just a matter of building up the nerve before Charlie passed on a demo tape to regular customer Damon Albarn of Blur. This led to meetings with legendary A&R man Mike Smith and eventually to a deal with EMI music publishing and the beginnings of a life writing songs with and for other artists full time. He got the chance to hone his songwriting skills while working with many of the industry’s best, Liz Rose, Pete Woodroffe, Savan Kotecha, Simon Wilcox, Chris Braide and Ed Sheeran being just a few.
Listen to examples of Charlie's work:
https://spoti.fi/36QJvTv
Charlie's artist project:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1A6CZx7bZ5M0E1y65KsKc7?si=AVKgyZRzSqi_zj9OXq0FGQ
Cuts with artists such as Simply Red, Rooster, Melanie C, former The Zombies frontman Colin Blunstone, Marco Mengoni and Joe Brooks established Charlie and his then writing partner Pete Woodroffe as an in demand London based songwriting team.
In 2013 Charlie helped to develop the songwriting module at London’s LCCM with his friend and regular songwriting partner Jez Ashurst. Tom Walker and Rhys Lewis were among their students.
A move to Berlin to take advantage of the vibrant creativity and excitement of a city claiming it’s place as an artistic world capital came in 2015. Charlie continues to release music with his own artist project and is working internationally as a songwriter with rising artists like Bryde, Hundreds, Lxandra, Thorsteinn Einarsson and Iris as well as established acts like Michael Patrick Kelly and Michael Schulte.
Charlie is also venturing into writing for TV, having co-written two songs for the TNT Comedy series The Mopes, airing in Spring/Summer 2021 in Germany. Along with creative partner Jonathan Kluth, Charlie is co-founder of Spirit Animal Kollektiv, a songwriting and production collective dedicated to collaborating with and developing new artists around the world.”
Pro Songwriting Masterclass | Season One | Box Set
Vocal Coach to major label recording artists
Jonathan Li
Social Media Expert
Jonathan Li is an expert in Social Media and digital marketing for independent artists and managers in the music business. He is a data-driven and growth-focused digital marketer with over 13 years of experience leading digital work for clients such as Nissan USA, Dell, AT&T, Infiniti USA / Global, Hewlett Packard, Electronic Arts, and Canada’s Broadcasting Corporation. He currently serves as a mentor with numerous music programs such as The Juno Awards Masterclass and Canada's Music Incubator where he has helped 200+ artists/music managers over the last 4 years with digital marketing. His consulting agency, Prosody Digital, works with businesses and marketing agencies to improve their eCommerce, SEO, paid advertising and analytics capabilities.
In his past artist life, Jonathan was a Western Canada Music Awards and Gospel Music Awards nominated singer/songwriter. Today, he utilizes his formal education in songwriting to pen songs for independent & major label artists around the world in multiple genres.
Larry Dvoskin
David Bowie, Bono, Sean Lennon & more
Larry Dvoskin is a Grammy nominated musician, #1 best selling author, entrepreneur, investor, music consultant and freelance writer for Rolling Stone magazine.
In a variety of roles his credits include David Bowie, Sammy Hagar, Bono, MGMT, Sean Lennon, Al Jardine of The Beach Boys, Unicef, UN, RCA, EMI, Warner Brothers, MTV, CBS, ABC, and as a creator and executive producer has sold television shows sold to NBC, MTV, Logo, and others
He has taught Songwriting at the NYU School of Professional Studies for 22 years and is the Founder and President of Do What You Love Media, Miracle Music Inc, and Cool Guy Music Inc.
