Stiles + Drewe and Mercury Musical Developments announce the Winner for the 2022 Best New Song Prize.
The Stiles+ Drewe Best New Song Prize Awards Ceremony was held last night at The Other Palace Theatre with Flora Leo winning the prize with her song OIne Last Request from the musical The Most Beautiful Suicide.
Twelve finalist songs from new British musicals were presented last night in the event hosted by Janie Dee. The finalists were selected from 175 submissions by a panel of theatre industry judges comprising George Stiles, Toby Marlow, Jenna Russell, Ameena Hamid and Matthew Xia.
As winner of the Best New Song Prize, Flora Leo recieves £1000 towards developing their work, with an additional £250 award for Voice, Vision and Potential awarded to Dan Mawson and Leo Mercer for their song This Isn’t Magic from Galileo: An A Cappella Musical.
Flora Leo studied Composition at the Royal Academy of Music and now works as a composer, lyricist, arranger and MD. Her musicals include Show & Tell (All Star Entertainment NYC, 2017) and The Lightning Road, which reached the semi-final of the Search for a Twitter Composer competition in 2017 and was staged as part of Iris Theatre’s Work in Progress scheme in 2018. She won the Voice, Vision & Potential Prize at the 2021 Stiles + Drewe Best New Song Finals and was Iris Theatre’s PLATFORM artist of the month in March 2022.
Last night’s event also celebrated 30 years of Mercury Musical Developments (MMD), the UK’s membership organization for writers of musical theatre. Established in 1992, MMD is dedicated to developing the talents and careers of its members and ensuring a future for British musicals. The evening celebrated the achievements of MMD’s members past and present, including songs from Identical by Stiles + Drewe and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by Darren Clark and Jethro Compton, among others.
George Stiles said:- “Witnessing an evening of new writing so diverse and accomplished, proved thrillingly to a full house at The Other Palace that new writing for the musical stage is alive and thriving. All the judges agreed that the prize could have gone deservedly to any of the 12 finalists.”
