Rachel Portman
Born in west Sussex, England, Rachel Portman began composing at age 14 and read music at Oxford University. She gained experience writing music for drama in BBC and Channel 4 films including Mike Leigh's Four Days In July and Jim Henson's Storyteller series.

Portman has written over 100 scores for film, television and theatre. She was the first female composer to win an Academy Award for her original score for Emma. She has received two further Academy nominations for The Cider House Rules and Chocolat, the latter also earned her a Golden Globe nomination.

For the stage and concert hall she has written an opera based on Saint Exupery's The Little Prince (2003) for Houston Grand Opera and the climate change inspired The Water Diviner's Tale (2007), a dramatic choral symphony for the BBC Proms. She has regularly collaborated with acclaimed author Sir Michael Morpurgo together they wrote the Christmas carol We were there (2014) for the Royal Livepool Philharmonic Orchestra and Youth Chorus. Endangered (2012), is an orchestral work commissioned by the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Beijing, for the the World Environment Day Concert in 2013. In 2019 Portman wrote Earth Song for the BBC Singers with text by poet Nick Drake and which also quotes Greta Thunberg. Portman scored the BBC1 animated Christmas special Mimi and the Mountain Dragon (2019) and in February 2020 recorded her first album as compser pianist for Node Records. Portman was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2010.

Raphaela Gromes
first began playing cello at the age of four. She made her debut as a soloist at the age of 14, when she performed the cello concerto by Friedrich Gulda, which earned the highest praise from audience and press alike. She completed her studies under Wen-Sinn Yang, Reinhard Latzko und Peter Bruns. Ms. Gromes gained decisive musical insight in master classes by David Geringas, Wolfgang Boettcher, Frans Helmerson and Yo-Yo Ma.

Raphaela Gromes has been a guest artist at festivals such as the Jungfrau Music Festival Interlaken, the Audi Summer Concerts in Ingolstadt with Kent Nagano, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Munich Opera Festival, the Marvao Interna- tional Music Festival in Portugal, the Edinburgh International Festival and the Rhein- gau Music Festival. Among other awards, she won First Prize in the Richard Strauss Competition in 2012, First Prize at the International Concorso Fiorindo in Turin in 2013 as well as the 2016 German Music Competition Prize in the solo cello category. She has been the recipient of a scholarship from the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes since 2012. She plays a Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume cello from c. 1855 on loan to her from a private collection.