Khaya Cohen, a freshman at the NYU Tisch Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, was named one of three winners nationwide of the BMI Foundsation’s 18th Annual John Lennon Scholarship for young songwriters. Cohen, who records under her first name Khaya, won the third place award of $5,000 for her song “Sky Might Fall” and at age 18 is the youngest of the three winners.
The John Lennon Scholarships were established by Yoko Ono in 1997, in conjunction with the BMI Foundation, and honor the memory of the legendary songwriter and former Beatle. The program is supported by donations from Ono with matching funds from Gibson Musical Instruments. Khaya was selected from thousands of entrants from every state in the US.
Prior to coming to NYU, Khaya was featured as a top 10 finalist on FOX’s music competition series “The X Factor” when she was in her junior year of high school, which inspired her to pursue a music career. In addition to songwriting, Khaya also enjoys music performance, production, and engineering. Her winning song can be streamed at bmifoundation.org/lennon-winners-2015.
The BMI judging panel included Rich Christina, Sr. VP & Head of East Coast A&R at Sony ATV Music Publishing; Ammar Malik, BMI Songwriter of the Year; Jake Ottman, Sr. VP of Warner Chappell Music Publishing; Rich Stumpf, Founder and CEO of Atlas Music Publishing; and Katy Wolaver, A&R at SONGS Music Publishing.