Nashville Students Step Into the Spotlight on ‘Marching Into Greatness: Voices of Tomorrow’

Nashville may be known for producing musical talent, but some of its most compelling emerging voices are still sitting in classrooms. Marching Into Greatness: Voices of Tomorrow, the second original album from the Metro Nashville Public Schools Visual and Performing Arts Department, gives those young creators a professional platform to show exactly what they can do.

Created through the award-winning MNPS Songwriting Summit, the seven-track project brings students together with professional songwriters, producers, musicians, and recording artists while keeping student perspectives at its center. Participants developed lyrics, melodies, production, and concepts before recording at Nashville's East Iris Studios.

The title track, “Marching Into Greatness,” features Grammy Award-winning artist Mr. Talkbox and transforms perseverance into a collective anthem. “Make It Undeniable” pairs Grammy Award-winning artist Tiera Kennedy with seventh-grade student Luca McLaughlin and was produced by fellow seventh-grader Carter Hammonds. Nashville School of the Arts senior Kingston Kharif takes the lead on “Here,” an uptempo reflection on the work and determination behind reaching a defining moment.

Elsewhere, “Confidence,” “Grounded,” “Beside You,” and “Above and Beyond” showcase student songwriting teams exploring belonging, purpose, self-belief, and growth.

Importantly, students weren't brought in simply to perform finished material. They participated across songwriting, recording, production, performance, and music video creation, gaining firsthand experience with the infrastructure surrounding a professional release.

The 2026 Songwriting Summit was expanded through investment from the CMA Foundation, with additional support from the Tennessee Titans One Community Foundation. It builds on a program already earning recognition, including a 2025 Midsouth Emmy Award for Every Student Known and four 2026 Telly Awards for the district's first album, I Believe, I Belong.

As Visual and Performing Arts Director Franklin Willis puts it, “The talent has always existed within Metro Nashville Public Schools.” Marching Into Greatness makes the case that young artists don't need to wait for someday to be taken seriously.

The students weren't simply performers on Marching Into Greatness. They were involved in songwriting, production, recording, and video creation. Why was giving them genuine creative ownership so important to the Songwriting Summit?

As educators, we often talk about student voice, but I believe we have to create opportunities where students can actually use that voice to shape something meaningful. From the beginning, the Songwriting Summit was never intended to be a program where adults created something and students simply performed it. We wanted our students to be the songwriters, producers, vocalists, musicians, storytellers, and creative decision-makers.

There is something powerful that happens when a young person realizes, “This is my idea. These are my words. I helped create this.” That sense of ownership changes how students see themselves and what they believe they are capable of doing.

My role as an educator and director is not to be the most creative person in the room. My responsibility is to build the room, provide the resources, bring the right people together, and then create enough space for students to discover just how creative they already are. Marching Into Greatness is powerful because our students can genuinely say that it belongs to them.

Nashville is surrounded by a world-renowned professional music industry. How do you make that industry feel accessible to young people who may not yet see themselves as having a place within it?

Access has to be intentional. We live in Music City, but proximity to the music industry does not automatically mean access to it. A student can grow up only a few miles from a recording studio, publishing company, or performance venue and never imagine that those spaces belong to them. That is something I want to change.

Part of my responsibility as Director of Visual and Performing Arts is to help remove the invisible barriers between our classrooms and the creative industry that surrounds us. When students walk into a professional studio, work alongside professional musicians and producers, collaborate with artists, or see their ideas treated with the same seriousness as the ideas of adults, the industry becomes less abstract. They begin to see a pathway.

I want our students to understand that Nashville's creative community is not simply something happening around them. They can be part of it. They can become the next generation of songwriters, producers, engineers, performers, filmmakers, designers, educators, executives, and entrepreneurs shaping what Music City becomes.

For me, that is what access really means. It is not simply opening the door. It is making sure young people know the door exists, helping them walk through it, and ensuring they are prepared to thrive once they get inside.

“Make It Undeniable” was produced by seventh-grade student Carter Hammonds and features fellow student Luca McLaughlin alongside Tiera Kennedy. What did moments like this reveal about what students can accomplish when they're trusted at a professional level?

Moments like that remind me that sometimes the limitations we place on young people have more to do with adult expectations than student ability.

When a seventh-grade student is producing a record and another young student is recording alongside an accomplished professional artist like Tiera Kennedy, we are challenging the traditional idea of what students are “ready” to do. We are saying that their age does not disqualify them from contributing at a high level.

But trust does not mean lowering the standard. It means giving students the instruction, mentorship, tools, time, and professional environment necessary to rise to it. We held our students to a high creative standard because we believed they could meet it, and they did.

That is really where the phrase “Make It Undeniable” resonates with me. When young people are given meaningful opportunities to demonstrate what they know and what they can create, their brilliance becomes difficult to overlook. Our job is to make sure they have access to those opportunities.

The program has grown from its first district album into an Emmy and Telly Award-winning initiative. What have you learned about student creativity and confidence as the Songwriting Summit has expanded?

I have learned that creativity grows when students know their ideas are valued. The awards and recognition are meaningful, and I am incredibly proud of what our students and team have accomplished. But the greatest measure of success for me is not an Emmy or a Telly. It is watching a student walk into the Summit unsure of whether their idea is good enough and then watching that same student stand in a professional recording studio confidently advocating for a lyric, a melody, a beat, or a creative decision. That transformation is everything.

As the Summit has grown, I have also learned that excellence and access do not have to compete with one another. We can create opportunities for more students while maintaining incredibly high artistic expectations. In fact, when students are given access to excellent instruction, professional resources, authentic collaboration, and adults who genuinely believe in them, they consistently rise to the occasion.

The recognition our work has received is exciting because it validates something educators already know: young people are capable of extraordinary work when we create environments where their creativity is taken seriously.

When these students look back on Marching Into Greatness: Voices of Tomorrow years from now, what do you hope they remember most about creating it?

I hope they remember how they felt. Years from now, they may not remember every lyric they wrote or every hour they spent in the studio, but I hope they remember being in a space where their ideas mattered. I hope they remember adults listening to them, their peers encouraging them, and the moment they realized that something they imagined could become something real.

Most importantly, I hope they remember that we believed in them. The title Marching Into Greatness is not about having already arrived. It is about continuing to move forward with purpose, confidence, and courage. I want our students to carry that mindset far beyond music. Whether they become professional artists, educators, engineers, doctors, entrepreneurs, or pursue something they have not even discovered yet, I hope this experience becomes evidence they can return to throughout their lives.

I want them to be able to say, “I was young, someone trusted me with something important, and I discovered that I was capable of more than I realized.” If they carry that with them, then the impact of this album will extend far beyond the music.