Winner announced for Stiles + Drewe’s BEST NEW SONG PRIZE

Stiles + Drewe and Mercury Musical Developments have announced the winner of the Stiles + Drewe Best New Song Prize 2022.

Twelve finalist songs from new British musicals were presented last night at The Other Palace, in a concert hosted by Olivier Award-winner Janie Dee. The twelve songs were selected from 175 submissions by a large panel of industry judges.  

The judging panel, comprising George Stiles, Anthony Drewe, Toby Marlow, Jenna Russell, Ameena Hamid and Matthew Xia awarded the Best New Song Prize to Flora Leo, who receives £1000 towards developing their work. An additional prize of £250 for Voice, Vision & Potential was awarded to Dan Mawson & Leo Mercer for their song ‘This Isn’t Magic’ from Galileo: An A Cappella Musical. 

The concert also celebrated 30 years of Mercury Musical Developments (MMD), the UK’s membership organisation for writers of musical theatre.

Anthony Drewe said: “Once again, the MMD Stiles + Drewe Prize yielded a bumper crop of new songs for our annual contest. After months of reviewing and whittling down the 175 entries to twelve, we and the other final judges had an extremely difficult task to pick out an overall winner. With thanks to Ameena Hamid, Matthew Xia, Toby Marlow and Jenna Russell, we settled on Flora Leo’s beautiful, touching and poignant song, ‘One Last Request’, from her musical The Most Beautiful Suicide as our winner. The breadth of subject matters and musical styles made the decision all the harder this year, but we think we have an unanimously worthy winner in Flora. An additional prize for Vision, Voice & Potential was awarded to Leo Mercer and Dan Mawson for their song from Galileo: An A Cappella Musical.”

George Stiles added: “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.”

Congratulations to Flora and all of the nominees!