Music Writers' Section

How composers and songwriters musicians are represented by the Music Writers' Section?

Live music events represent an increasingly important element of most musicians’ income as it is an ongoing struggle for musicians to make a fair living from publishing and rights alone, so the work of the Section is vitally important.  

Live Performance Section is headed up by Kelly Wood who is liaising with the Section Committee and feeding back its key findings to the Executive Committee, as well as being on hand for MU members who write music and lyrics.

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What does the Music Writers' Section Committee do?

The Music Writers' Section Committee is discussing a range of topics concerning musicians in the industry. We have compiled guidelines on how much composers, arrangers and copyists should expect to be paid for their work.

Our Committee is keen to press for equal opportunities and high standards of employment for everyone.

We’re delighted to have a diverse group as the Music Writers’ Section Committee with a wide breadth of skills and experience to feed into the MU’s work in the sector.  

Here are current elected Committee members:  

Andrew Cruickshank

Andrew Cruickshank is from Glasgow and has served on the committee for a number of years. While he writes mostly for theatre and community settings, he has also worked in film and tv, written several political musicals and has even composed an opera. He regularly works in a psychiatric hospital where he says that he is “continually reminded of the transformative effect music can have.”

Anthony Hill

Anthony Hill is a media composer for film and television, among other things.  He trained as a film composer at Berklee College of Music, and since then has composed for Alibi Music, US since 2020 and SatV (Sky) since 2021. He has 25 years experience as a composer, instrumentalist, and recording artist, recording over 28 commercially released tracks through M&G/Polygram (Universal Music Group), and BMG, including single, E.P. and album formats. 

Benjamin Till

Benjamin Till is a BAFTA-nominated, multi-award-winning filmmaker and composer who is a pioneer in the field of documentary musicals. Films include Our Gay Wedding the Musical (Channel 4), which was nominated for fifteen major TV awards including Guardian TV Moment of the Year. Benjamin is Resident Composer for Mosaic Voices who are based at the New West End Synagogue in Central London for whom he has composed and arranged over 150 pieces of liturgical music.  His compositions, which include three oratorios and The London Requiem have been performed all over the world.

Fiona Brice

Fiona Brice is an orchestral composer-arranger with 20+ years’ experience of the classical, independent and commercial industries. She works with major UK orchestras on collaborative performances with singer-songwriters & rock bands, and writes orchestral arrangements for studio albums. Fiona is currently Collaborative Composer in Association with the London Mozart Players. She is signed to Bella Union records, has written for TV (BBC1) and several short films, and performed on 50+ studio albums and toured worldwide. She is also involved in music education as a mentor and occasionally runs workshops.

Helen Epega (The Venus Bushfires)

Helen Epega is a Nigerian-British composer, visual artist and workshop facilitator bringing diverse cultures together through expressive arts. She composed the world's first pidgin (broken) English opera 'Song Queen: A Pidgin Opera' in 2015 which has since been performed in London, Lagos and Cape Town.  Helen has created music for Sony Play Station and Disney and has been featured on BBC, CNN and The Guardian. This year Helen is one of the musicians awarded the PRS Foundation’s Composer Award and is nominated for an #OFFIE award for Best Idea in Design and Sound for the production #confinement. 

Iona Fyfe

Aberdeenshire folksinger, Iona Fyfe, has become one of Scotland’s finest singers, rooted deeply in the singing traditions of the North East of Scotland. In 2021, she became the first singer to win the coveted title of Musician of the Year at the MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards. Iona is a fierce advocate for the official recognition of the Scots Language, leading a successful campaign to pressure Spotify into recognising Scots and add it to its list of languages. Iona has featured in several publications including The Sunday Post, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Times.

Jill Streater

Jill Streater has been making a living from music preparation for the last 40 years, which is about the same number of years she has been on the MU Music Writers’ Section Committee. She has worked on thousands of projects, including many major shows and movies, most often on film recordings as head of UK music preparation (examples - The last 5 Bond movies - 3 different composers over that time, The Hobbit, Mission Impossible). Her particular skills are in coordinating multiple simultaneous projects and supervising large music copying teams. She is keen to introduce another generation to the joys of skilled music preparation!

Louis Barabbas

Louis Barabbas is a writer and performer, best known as singer for Manchester rock band The Bedlam Six between 2006-2016. He has toured all over the world, sharing stages with such disparate acts as Motorhead, Supergrass, Sun Ra's Arkestra and The Blockheads. As well as writing for his own band he has composed songs for Liz Green and Dutch trio Snowapple, as well as multiple collaboration projects. He was Artistic Director of independent label Debt Records, during which time he also founded The Open Recording Sessions, a series of free drop-in studio events. He quit touring in 2017 and now composes for theatre and runs community music events.

Matt Huxley

Max Huxley is a composer and musician originally from Dorset and now living in London. He has created music and sound design for a range of productions and occasions, often with socially engaged themes and collaborative making processes. He has received prizes from the Grierson Awards and Tribeca Film Festival. Matt has also received several commissions for broadcast TV work from the BBC and Channel 4. Matt has also participated in and led theatre workshops for the National Theatre, National Youth Theatre, Good Chance Theatre and more. Matt is one half of the band Strange Boy, and has released two EPs of his own music (under the moniker Muckers) through the label he operates, Circle Dance.

Matthew Whiteside

Matthew Whiteside is a composer and Artistic Director of The Night With… Based in Glasgow he is one of the List’s Hot 100 for 2019 and was named ‘One to Watch’ by the Scotsman in 2020. In 2018 he won the Light Moves Innovative Use of Sound Award for his work Quartet No. 4 (Entangled) with Marisa Zanotti and was selected as a PRSF Fellow for Classical Next. In 2020 he won the SMIA Award for Creative Programming at the Scottish Awards for New Music for the 2019 season of The Night With…. and in 2021 won the Award for the Recording of New Music sponsored by VoxCarynx for his work on The Night With… Live Vol. One. He is an advocate for fairer streaming payments for composers and performers. 

Natasha Norman

Music Writers committee member Natasha TL Norman is a London based songwriter & producer with Trinidadian roots. Most recently asked to lead a team as A&R Supervisor for Girls I Rate’s Future Hitmaker Competition “Get Heard” 2022. Natasha’s songwriting qualified for the international soca monarch competition in Trinidad, which then led her to have her music performed live at Abbey Road Studios. Natasha’s experience with TileYard, BMI, University of Westminster, and as an Ivors Music creator led her to author the Amazon book, “The Songwriter’s Assistant”. As this is the second tenure of being elected to the committee, Natasha hopes to address the issues faced by artists trying to navigate the industry. 

Robin Rimbaud

Since 1991 Scanner (British artist Robin Rimbaud) has released albums ranging from ambient electronic music through to touring the music of Joy Division with a full orchestra. His vast body of work connects a bewilderingly diverse array of genres, from scoring The Big Dance for 1000 dancers in Trafalgar Square London for the Olympics, to scoring the world’s first VR ballet with Dutch National Ballet.  Contemporary dance has remained a constant in his career, and to date he has scored 66 contemporary dance productions. Committed to working with cutting edge practitioners he collaborated with Bryan Ferry, Wayne MacGregor, Mike Kelley, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Michael Nyman, Steve McQueen, Laurie Anderson and Hussein Chalayan, amongst many others.

Steve Luck

Steve Luck is a composer and pianist from Newcastle upon Tyne. He works with filmmakers and production music libraries, but also has a profile as a solo artist, composing and self-releasing modern classical pieces, mainly featuring his first instrument, the piano. He is a Royal Television Society award winning composer for TV and film work and the founder of the 'Atmospherica' series of composer concerts which feature contemporary classical composers performing their own music in a variety of unusual venues in and around Newcastle.

Sorana Santos

Sorana Santos composes contemporary music, songs, and sound design for computer games and audiobooks across the contemporary music, jazz, and songwriting styles, which she also researches academically. Her imprint ‘I Dream Sound’ is distributed through The Orchard. She has been nominated for a British Composer Award and is a published author. She runs thriving songwriting courses and has a penchant for the legal and financial areas associated with her work, such as academic and creative self-funding, self-releasing music, creative ownership/IP/publishing rights relating to academia, and securing academic embargoes for creative work.

Tracey Kelly

Serving on the Music Writers’ Committee, Tracey Kelly has contributed to crucial discussions about issues faced by composers, songwriters, copyists and arrangers, such as with the Composers Against Buyouts campaign. Tracey’s career has included: solo work (most recently, lockdown songwriting collaboration single Radio in the Rain); writing songs for her duo Tracey & Jason; composing for TV, film, fashion shows and corporate events (BBC 2, Eidos Games, Royal College of Art); and composing choral pieces for adults and children, including performances with a Theatre Royal ensemble. Tracey also works as a feature singer, and has sessioned for TV and film.

Verity Susman

Verity Susman is a songwriter, film/TV composer and performing artist (vocals/keyboards/saxophone). She began her career in the late 1990s as leader of the all-female post-rock band Electrelane. A decade later she moved into composing for film, alongside writing and performing as a solo artist. She recently formed a new band called MEMORIALS – a duo with Matthew Simms (guitarist in Wire) – with whom she also now composes and records film/TV scores. They will release their debut album and tour in May 2023.

Andrew Green

Andrew Green is a copyist, composer and orchestrator who has frequent and extensive contact with key industry stakeholders, working on music preparation for over 70 film scores along with additional film orchestration and theatre composition. His participation as a long-standing member of the MWS Committee includes taking a leading role in responding to the restructuring of Sibelius to serving on the advisory group for the current MU and Ivors Composers Against Buyouts campaign.

Kapil Seshasayee

Kapil Seshasayee offers a unique perspective as a writer across many high profile works who transitioned from being entirely DIY. He has worked on commissions for BBC Asian Network / Creative Scotland / Celtic Connections with a number of famous musicians including members of Mogwai / Belle & Sebastian but has only recently acquired management and a booking agent. He feels that the MU should better reflect the perspectives & challenges of self-managed musicians. These challenges are especially evident navigating areas like publishing & touring.

Martin Jeremiah

Martin Jeremiah is a singer-songwriter and has been a MU member for 15 years. As a recent Chair of the MWSC, serving two terms, he also attended the 2019 MU Conference on behalf of the committee. He’s proud of the MWSC’s achievements, particularly in the last couple of years; working more closely with, and being a ‘go to’ for MU officials; being more active in between meetings; pushing campaigns and moving the cause of writers and composers up the MU agenda.

Timo Baker

Timo Baker is a film and television composer and recording artist with 30 years of experience at "the coal face". He has a wealth of industry knowledge and expertise to share. He feels that the music industry has changed a great deal over the last 15 years, and we need to ensure music creators are properly represented in this ever evolving arena.

How can i join the Music Writers' Section Committee?

If you are a MU member who is working as composer or songwriter, and are willing to help us affect change for good, get in touch.

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