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.
Rob Wells
Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, Adam Lambert & more
Rob Wells is a multi-platinum, award-winning music producer and songwriter based in Canada.
Wells has worked with Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, Adam Lambert, Serena Ryder, Nick Lachey, Mika, Katharine McPhee, Backstreet Boys, Kai, Paloma Faith, Alex Aiono, Nelly Furtado, Big Time Rush, Mindless Behavior, Cyndi Lauper, Corey Hart, Olivia Newton John, Boyzone, Ronan Keating, Ria Mae, Lights, USS, Frank Walker, Bobby Bazini, Tep No, Victoria Duffield, Keshia Chante, Matt Dusk, Marie-Mai, Marc Dupre, Shiloh, RyanDan and many others.
His work has been featured in numerous films, television shows, commercials and video games worldwide.
With a star on the Mississauga Music Walk of Fame, Rob has appeared as a music producer on "Canadian Idol", "The House Of Carters" & "The Next Star". His awards include first place in numerous songwriting competitions, and SOCAN #1 awards with gold, platinum & multi-platinum certifications.
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
Andrew Rollins
Nashville TV show, Blink 182, Carole King & more
Andrew is an Emmy award winning composer, hit songwriter and musician, an acoustic master - whether he's playing guitar, keyboard, or mixing, orchestrating or editing. Andrew has an innate ability to capture the essence of a mood and this has been key to his contributions in various well known songs, as well as music on film and television.
His resumé includes several songs on the ABC series Nashville, the theme song of the award winning comedy show The Hughleys, featured songs for HBO's Happily Ever After: A Fairy Tale for Every Child, Three Little Pigs and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and other features for network and cable productions including General Hospital, The Ranch, At Any Cost, Mr. Music, Shake, Rattle & Roll, Hendrix, Free of Eden, My Own Country, Live Through This, Jailbait, Star Trek Voyager, The Amazing Race, Level 9, and the Broadway production It Ain't Nothing But the Blues - which was nominated for four Tony awards, including Best Musical.
Andrew has worked with well known recording artists including Andre Benjamin, B.B. King, Chaka Kahn, Marc Anthony, Chante Moore, Charles Esten, Ronnie Dunn, Terrance Trent D'Arby, Graham Nash, Billy Ray Cyrus, Blink 182, Dan Wilson, Dionne Warwick, Jose Feliciano, Johnny Lang, Dicky Barrett, K-Ci & Jo-Jo, Deana Carter, Carole King, Joe Walsh, Gary Allen, Saison, IV Xample, and En Vogue, among many others.
In 2018, Andrew was nominated and won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Song "Who I Am", which he wrote for General Hospital. Some other awards that he received include 3 SISA International Music Awards for Album of the Year, Producer of the Year, and Song of the Year for I Believe, a Telly Award, and the Axion Award for Musical Excellence.
Andrew is now runs a publishing company Left On Sunset with Randy Jackson.
Paddy Byrne
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.
James Bryan
Shawn Mendes, Nelly Furtado, Lisa-Marie Presley & more
James Bryan McCollum (PKA James Bryan) is a Juno and Latin Grammy-winning songwriter, guitarist and producer whose mission is to inspire, uplift and connect through music. He began his career in Canadian acts
The Philosopher Kings and
Prozzak before James' passion for collaboration grew into a global songwriting and recording career with top artists including
Drake,
Nelly Furtado,
Shawn Mendes,
Luis Fonsi,
Martin Garrix,
Yuna,
Lisa Marie Presley, and many more. James has co-written and performed on hundreds of recordings, with artists from every continent, and performed on stages from
Wembley Stadium to
Madison Square Gardens and
Massey Hall. He has lived in Toronto, London and Los Angeles, and is at home in any studio in the world.
James has also released four albums as a solo guitarist, most recently, We Rise in 2022.
IG:
https://www.instagram.com/jamesbryanmusic/
FB:
https://www.facebook.com/jamesbryanmusic
YT:
https://www.youtube.com/@jamesbryanmusic
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/26DQgTMrhXwp1ndiWYjBTc?si=CnPMNIntR_aPYMiPNqON9w
Lee Dannay
A&R | 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.
Larry Dvoskin
David Bowie, Sammy Hagar, Bono, MGMT & 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.
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.
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.”
Eliza Carthy MBE
English Folk revival star awarded MBE by H.M The Queen
Eliza is a multi award winning Folk revival artist, musician and broadcaster honoured by the Queen with an MBE in 2015, for services to Folk Music.
Her music effortlessly crosses boundaries of genre and style, whether performing a centuries-old ballad or a self-written song, with her powerful, nuanced voice, fiercely beautiful fiddle playing and mesmerising live performances.
Listen to examples of Eliza's work here:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3ZSRiAJKs42ymp2KYA80Qh?si=1t2AFAJuTvySJt-s8yawiw
Born into a formidable musical dynasty, her mother Norma was one of The Watersons and her father Martin Carthy is a hugely influential singer and guitarist. Eliza was championed from an early age by the likes of John Peel, Andy Kershaw, Billy Bragg and Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis and has moved through English folk music like a force of nature, both stirring it up and putting it back on the map through television, radio and live performance.
She has been a judge at both the Q Awards and the Ivor Novello Awards, and in 2005 co-presented the BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards with Benjamin Zephaniah. Her achievements have been acknowledged with numerous BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, two Mercury Prize nominations, and in 2003 she was the first English traditional musician to be nominated for a BBC Radio 3 Award for World Music. Her own vastly eclectic tastes, along with her knowledge of (and interest in) musical traditions from all over the world continues to fuel her creativity to this day.
As well as recording numerous albums at home, in recent years she has worked on several high-profile commissions for theatre and film. A fruitful working relationship with the respected Shakespearean director Barrie Rutter OBE led to her composing music for The Two Noble Kinsmen at London’s Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and – closer to home – for Jack Lear at Hull Truck Theatre. She has also acted as a musical consultant and made important contributions to the soundtracks of two Hollywood movies: Far From The Madding Crowd (2015) and Tulip Fever (2017).
Ari Berger
Artist Manager | Anderson Paak & more
Ari is an experienced and widely respected artist manager and artist advocate based in Los Angeles, with a demonstrated history of working at a high level in the music industry. She is an extremely strong professional who is skilled in artist management, personal branding, tour management, event production, business development, artist marketing and the in depth workings of A&R departments in record labels.
She is currently A&R at 12Tone Music in Los Angeles.
Vincent Corver
Steinway Artist and award winning composer
Official Steinway Artist and Award-Winning Pianist, Composer & Producer.
Vincent’s recordings and performances received global, five-star acclaim from The Gramophone Magazine, BBC Music Magazine, The Guardian, The Independent, American Record Guide & others. His recent musical score for the international campaign “Qurated For You” by the Qatar Tourism Authority for the FIFA World Cup 2022 has been airing to over One Billion people daily in over 700 different formats all across the globe, including on NYC Times Square and London Piccadilly Circus.
His recordings and compositions earned him the Diapason D'Or Award, Triple Platinum at the Marcom Film Awards, including one Platinum and two Gold Awards at the AVA Digital Awards. In 2016 Corver became a Native Instruments Feature Artist, producing various collaborations projects with the Universal Music Group. He works in close relationship with the renowned DJ Paul van Dyk producing the hit-track “While You Were Gone” and tracks like “Escape Reality Tonight”, "Reprise" and "Deep Within". His music is being performed at all major music festivals around the world, including TomorrowLand, Cream Ibiza, Creamfields, Amnesia, Electric Castle, Ministry of Sound and many others. He specialises in the composition and production of Film- and Electronic Music scores, where the composition process mostly starts at the piano.
J.R. Schumann
Senior Director of Programming Sirius XM Nashville
J.R. Schumann is the Senior Director of Programming for SiriusXM Satellite Radio and is the head of Country Music programming for the platform. He has been named one of the most influential people in country radio several times by numerous trade organisations such as RadioInk, Billboard Magazine, and Country Aircheck. He is also a successful personal development speaker, coach, and media professional.
Kevin McCove
Synch writer | CBS, Fox, MTV & more
Kevin McCove is both a successful musician and passionate educator. He has performed opening shows for Drake, Billy Joel, Kid Rock, One Republic, Backstreet Boys among other major names. As a composer and songwriter experienced in synchronisation, Kevin has had music placed in TV networks including CBS, Fox, MTV and Telemundo, as well as advertising placements with Delta Airlines, Gannett, Toyota and more. Kevin has inked performance contracts with LiveNation, worked on songwriting teams with artists from Atlantic records, UMG and RCA. In education he and is a highly respected speaker who has guest lectured at many schools and universities on how to equip yourself to become a full time musician in today's music business.
