The music between the notes Coming together In the middle of 2026, as conversations around artificial intelligence continue to raise questions about how music is created, and how it can create in seconds what many spend years learning and perfecting, a group of songwriters, artists, producers, and composers met at Pennard House, near Glastonbury, to connect in-person, share experience and find the music between the notes.
For one week in June, the centuries-old country manor in the English countryside welcomed the BMI x Chris Difford Composer + Songwriter Retreat, an event hosted by Grammy-nominated, double Ivor Novello Award-winning lyricist and Squeeze co-founder Chris Difford and BMIs Vice President of Creative, Film, TV & Visual Media, Tracy McKnight. The retreat reflects BMIs ongoing commitment to fostering creative collaboration across genres and disciplines, creating space for artists at different stages of their careers to build meaningful relationships and develop new work.
BMI invited a diverse group of songwriters, artists, producers, and composers to participate, including Grammy Award-winning vocalist and BMI writer Steve Smith, Dominic Lewis, Jade Bird, Victoria Canal, Shridhar Solanki, Frances Madden, Charlie Dempsey, Levi Evans, Rachel Ruggles and Gracie Coates of Gracie and Rachel, UV Killen Em (Yuval Chain), and others. What the retreat ultimately revealed was that the most meaningful thing created that week wasnt simply the songs, but the relationships that made them possible.
So why spend a week in an old house in Somerset creating music together?
Steve Smith put it simply: The peacefulness and feeling of inspiration that surrounds Pennard House really does have a sort of magic effect on the creative process during the retreat.
Ask anyone who was there what actually happened that week, though, and the answer always comes back to the people in the room.
Always about people For many, those few days marked the beginning of, in Jade Birds words, collaborations and friendships that will last decades.
Being in a house full of musicians, hearing songs coming literally through the walls, running into someone in the kitchen and continuing a conversation from the session, listening back together at night, says Gracie Coates of Brooklyn duo Gracie and Rachel. All of that becomes part of the creative process. Its not just the hours in the writing room. Its the whole atmosphere around it.
The retreat was structured so that a new three-person group of artists was formed each morning, which kept everyone in a state of anticipation about what the day would bring. The annual retreat is always full of an exciting and eclectic mix of artists, songwriters and composers from a very varied range, says Steve Smith a mix that meant the conversations continued throughout the day's writing sessions, and through lunch and into dinner.
In the writing rooms, the format demanded full attention. Someone throws out an idea, someone else takes it somewhere unexpected and before you know it youre creating something none of you would have come up with on your own, says Shridhar Solanki.
That productive spontaneity was, for many, the point. Jade Bird, whose music spans folk, rock, and Americana, drew from David Bowie in the idea that the right creative place is the one where your feet arent quite touching the bottom. The creative discomfort delivered something unexpected. I was surprised at just how deep the bond felt between everyone at the end, she says, like wed been on an emotional, physical, and profound journey together.
Trust formed across collaborations that would have seemed unlikely from the outside. Rachel Ruggles of Gracie and Rachel, a classical violinist and indie rock songwriter, found herself paired with hip-hop producer UV Killen em (Yuval Chain). We talked for a long time before making any noise about music we like, what makes us happy, our families, she says. At the end of the day we not only had a ton of fun writing a song, but the blending of backgrounds and interpretations yielded something Im quite excited about.
Not every spark came from a conversation. Victoria Canal recalls how the magical atmosphere of Pennard House inspired a late-night encounter in the garden that ultimately evolved into a song both profound and catchy. Whether folklore or imagination, the story quickly became part of the retreats creative fabric, illustrating how inspiration seemed to find its way into every corner of the estate.
The most direct statement of what these intimate collaborations produced came from UK-based songwriter and producer, Charlie Dempsey:
The excitement that comes from coming up with ideas as a group, ideas that only exist because you had a certain conversation or were in a certain room at a certain moment, cant be replicated by anything artificial.
Technology as enabler That's where the gear comes in, not as the focus of the story, but as the foundation supporting it that that can often seem invisible.
Melodic information is so easily forgotten. I can sing a line and a second later its gone, says Jade Bird, explaining the temporary, almost fragile, nature of creative moments. This idea that the less attention technology demanded, the more writers could stay completely immersed in the moment, preserving ideas before they vanished returned in conversations again and again.
Rachel Ruggles thinks of the recording setup as simply a witness to capturing the magic, often when one least expects it. Letting it roll and ideally even forgetting about it is my goal.
Gracie Coates drew the same conclusion from the other direction:
Ideas can be so fleeting when they arrive. If the setup is cumbersome or you have to stop and troubleshoot something, you can easily lose the thread.
The value of technology wasnt measured in specifications or features, but
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The music between the notes Coming together In the middle of 2026, as conversations around artificial intelligence continue to raise questions about how music is created, and how it can create in seconds what many spend years learning and perfecting, a group of songwriters, artists, producers, and composers met at Pennard House, near Glastonbury, to connect in-person, share experience and find the music between the notes.
