The Australian Performing Rights Association (APRA) today announced a new songwriting contest, named after Australian songwriting geniuses Harry Vanda and George Young.
Vanda & Young were the backbone of The Easybeats and then Flash and the Pan.Their songs include ‘Friday On My Mind’, ‘Love Is In The Air’ and ‘Down Among The Dead Men’.
The Vanda & Young songwriting contest is open to all songwriters, published or unpublished., professional and amateur, local and international across all genres.
“I am extremely honoured that the Nordoff Robbins songwriting prize is to be named after George Young and myself,” Harry Vanda said in a statement.” Anything we can do to encourage good song writing is a positive thing. However, more importantly, it is such a very worthwhile cause, and the work that Nordoff-Robbins does is fantastic, so I couldn’t be happier to support it.”
“Writing a song can be a tough business, and while true it can take no more than five minutes, a songwriter can often work on a song for weeks, months or even years before they consider the song finished, and all the while without any guarantee of any payback for their effort,” says George Young. “This competition and the prizes on offer provide the opportunity to make it all worthwhile. Nordoff-Robbins is a noble cause and deserves much greater recognition and support for all of the outstanding work they perform in the wider community and I hope the competition will help them achieve this.”
The winner of the competition will receive:
Return business class airfare to the US and UK plus 5 days accommodation.
$20,000 Cash
Songwriting mentorship with Paul Williams
Producer mentorship with Martin Terefe and Sacha Skarbeck
Production crew for video
Les Gibson Guitar
Studio time at 301 with an engineer
Live gig to perform at Song Summit in Sydney in June 2010.
Enters are now open but will close on September 30, 2009.
The winner will be announced in Novermber30.
Click here to register
