The 2011 edition of Song Castle co-writing workshop was organized on May 8-10 in the beautiful and bucolic surroundings of the Harjattula Manor near Turku. This year’s Song Castle was part of Turku’s European Capital of Culture offering and, as such, featured a little guerrilla strike of a seminar to the storied downtown club Dynamo on May 11. The first part of the seminar was open to only participants, but the second part of the seminar was open and dealed with the creative and business processes of songwriting in a more general manner.
The idea behind Song Castle is to bring together 10 to 20 hand-picked Finnish songwriters with top international writers to concentrate on writing songs for a variety of markets. Both the music and the contacts generated by these very intense couple of days will help songwriters write some hits and build lasting careers.
Also present at Song Castle are international managers, record labels and publishers, naturally. You need someone to write for, right? Representatives of these companies active in markets all over the world come in with very specific briefs.
The combination of creativity and business smarts gives Song Castle a truly unique atmosphere that helps forge lasting bonds between writers from around the world. The fact that the retreat also gives business people and creatives a chance to break bread away from hustle and bustle of their workaday lives can only do the music business good. Lots of it.
Song Castle has already proven to be more than a just nice couple of days to meet people. "Ready Or Not", performed by Michael Mind Project and featuring Sean Kingston was written by Risto Asikainen, Will Simms and Mikko Tamminen at a Song Castle… and this year it’s the official mascot song of this year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup in Germany. It has running and kicking chance of being the house anthem for 2011.
- Organized since 2007 by Music Export Finland in cooperation with Sibelius Academy Continuing Education and The Finnish Music Publishers Association.
- Relationships that started at previous Song Castles have resulted in hits in markets from Germany to Taiwan.
- Songwriters that have participated in the past: Will Simms, Niara Scarlett, Rob Davis and Jaakko Salovaara, among others.
- Website: www.musex.fi/en/event/song-castle-2011
