News 2008

The artists involved in the Compassionart Charity will this week begin recording song at London's world famous Abbey Road studios. Compassionart is a charity set up by Martin Smith dedicated to seeing works of art generate income for the poorest of the poor. An unprecedented songwriters retreat took place in Scotland in January, attended by the biggest names in Christian music, to write songs for the chairty.

Paul Baloche, Stu G, Israel Houghton, Graham Kendrick, Matt Redman, Martin Smith, Michael W. Smith and Chris Tomlin are re-grouping at Abbey Road this week to record the songs they wrote in January. The resulting music will released as a Compassionart studio album being planned for release in late autumn 2008. Michael W. Smith, who has called the recent Compassionart retreat "one of the most significant weeks of his life" and 2008 GRAMMY winner, Israel Houghton, have already recorded the song 'So Great'. That song will be released in April on the 'WOW Hits 1' compilation CD.

Steven Curtis Chapman, Tim Hughes, Andy Park and Darlene Zschech also attended the songwriters retreat in January. The songwriters combined skills produced 22 new songs for the charity. All of the songwriters, publishers, managers, copyright institutes and agents involved have waived their rights and are donating their efforts on this project to Compassionart. The songs are to raise money for the relief of suffering around the planet. One half of the monies received over the songs' lifetimes will go to the songwriters' charity of choice, and the other 50% will go to a charitable project agreed upon by all the songwriters involved.