ACM’s BASCA scholarship winner announced

BASCA Chairman Crispin Hunt (left) and scholarship winner Nathan Morgan

Nathan Morgan is 2017 recipient of the exclusive award and will start a free three-year Songwriting and Artist Development programme

Academy of Contemporary Music (ACM) have partnered with BASCA for the past three years to offer one lucky student a fully-funded place on their Songwriting and Artist Development degree, worth up to £27,000. After a rigorous judging process, a BASCA panel alongside ACM tutors chose just three finalists to perform at the annual BASCA Summer Party, held at London’s Camden Proud this week.

Kicking off the evening was finalist Jake Melles who performed his original song Clarity on acoustic guitar, followed by Linda Quero, who delivered a soulful performance of her song Honesty backed by both a backing track and her acoustic guitar. The final performance was from Nathan Morgan who gave an intimate performance of his original composition Don’t Need You.

Once all the performances were concluded, BASCA Chairman Crispin Hunt announced Morgan as the 2017 recipient of the exclusive award. “We went through everyone who’d entered the scholarship, there were some fantastically talented people, it was quite difficult to choose between one and the other,” said Hunt. “We went through and watched the demo videos and they were all really strong, everyone that was put forward was really strong but there were a couple of things that stood out about certain people, they had a certain something and as I’m a writer/producer, I work with lots of people from all across the board but I do a lot of choosing in that I get four or five people ask me a week to work with them and I’m very picky in who I choose and these people were just for me, in my own sense of what’s good and what’s not, were the three that connected with me. It’s about connection. Connecting with music is about telling the truth and there was something about these three that told the truth. Their performances tonight were superb.”

After hearing his name being announced as the winner, Morgan was clearly shocked and over the moon about receiving this year’s Scholarship, saying, “It just feels so amazing to have won the 2017 BASCA Scholarship. It’s a true honour and I’m so glad and so grateful to have even been here to perform my song. I’m just so chuffed, I have hardly any words but I thank God and I thank ACM for giving me this opportunity and to BASCA for setting this up, for considering me, let alone choosing me to win this – thank you so much. I look forward to working with both ACM and BASCA in the near future.”

The runners-up will receive studio time and some one-to-one sessions with ACM’s Kaya Herstad-Carney. Alongside the BASCA Scholarship, ACM offers three other Scholarships to its future students, the Freddie Mercury Scholarship, the Skunk Anansie Scholarship: and the Keith Lowde Scholarship. Visit the website for more information: acm.ac.uk

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