SongZone is the brainchild of composer and specialist music teacher Jane Finch and leading vocal coach Angela Kewley. Like many music teachers, Jane lived with the reality that most music books only contain one or two pieces that pupils really enjoy, so back in 2000 she started to write fun pieces for her pupils that would also help develop their technique. These rapidly became their firm favourites to the extent that she found herself having to write several new pieces every week just to keep up with demand.

With over 20 years experience in vocal coaching, performance and show production in schools around the South West, Angela realised the potential for young singers immediately. Acting as consultant, she helped Jane develop material into well-crafted songs that children seriously enjoyed singing. As a qualified class teacher, Angela was also in a position to suggest appropriate subject material to ensure educational needs were supported. The first public airing came in December 2007, when the junior choir of Angela's school sang the Christmas Lullaby from Follow That Star! at their end of term service. The response was incredible.

Since then our production team and material has steadily grown. Our first eco-show - Global Warning - was performed as a pilot at local school at the end of the 2008 summer term. The show was a resounding success, proving to be the most popular they had done in years. Finalised production tracks for the first two songbooks were assembled during 2009 and discussed with teachers, heads, parents and pupils. The message from all was clear and unequivocal - we were turning out the very best songs for schools available on the market. As a consequence and with just one product for sale, we launched SongZone October 2010.

Our Philosophy has grown out of trials of our own song material and from comparison with existing materials. What struck us from the outset was how quickly children were able to learn and retain certain lyrics and melodies, whilst struggling with others. Our primary goal became not to produce volumes of 'good' or 'ok' songs, but a handful of truly great childrens' songs that generated excitement and were instantly memorable.

We discovered that children - even as young as 6 and 7 years - were responding particularly well to music primarily aimed at the teenage market. When faced with the choice of typical childrens' song production and up-to-date tracks, up-to-date tracks won hands down every time. As a result, we decided that SongZone's music, whilst having lyrical content suitable for a young audience, should have the genuine 'feel' of real pop and show songs. Professional recording and producing of tracks in this manner is neither cheap nor easy and so our policy is to invest in the music itself rather than business paraphenalia.

Another thing that struck us is that many songbooks have quite difficult piano accompaniments and overly condensed score layouts. In order to maximise participation within a school we decided to generate simpler piano parts instead of complicated score reductions and lay these out clearly with full lyrics. Our scores are suitable for pianists of modest ability and hopefully will allow more students and teachers to join in the fun!

Finally, we felt it important to donate a proportion of the profit from each songbook to an appropriate charity - music is a great gift to us all that works best when shared