Rachel Portman - ask the river '2020

Tracks list

Best known for her pastoral orchestral scores for literary adaptations, but also
for incorporating diverse ethnic influences and varied tones as called for,
Rachel Portman is an Oscar- and Emmy-winning film and television composer from
Surrey, England. After getting her start with the BBC in the 80s, she went on to
score big-screen adaptations like 1993s Ethan Frome and The Joy Luck Club before
her music for the 1996 version of Jane Austens Emma made her the first female to
win an Academy Award for Best Original Score. She was nominated again for 1999s
The Cider House Rules and 2000s Chocolat, both of which also garnered Grammy
nominations. Also known for such varied films as the 1993 romantic comedy Benny
& Joon, the 2004 remake of political thriller The Manchurian Candidate, and the
2013 Diablo Cody comedy-drama Paradise, she won an Emmy in 2015 for her work on
the TV movie Bessie, about legendary blues singer Bessie Smith. Again, she
became the first female composer to win in the score category. She is also known
for fully orchestrating her own scores.

Born Rachel Mary Berkeley Portman in Haslemere in 1960, Portman showed strong
musical inclinations from a young age, and learned to play piano, violin, and
organ before beginning to compose music in her early teens. She went on to study
music at Oxford University, with no thought given to film-related work until she
was invited to score a student film. The BBC picked up the film, 1982s
Privileged, which also featured an acting appearance by fellow Oxford student
Hugh Grant. She enjoyed the work, and it led to further projects with BBC films.
In 1986, she wrote the score for the British-made Jim Henson TV pilot The
Storyteller, following it with work on eight subsequent episodes in 1987 and
1988. She won the British Film Institutes Young Composer of the Year award in
1988, then the Carlton Award for Creative Originality for Women in Film. She was
also nominated by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts for her scores
to The Woman in Black (1989), the three-part drama Oranges Are Not the Only
Fruit (1990), and Where Angels Fear to Tread (1991).

In 1992, British director Beeban Kidron, a prior and future collaborator, asked
her to come to Hollywood to score her film Used People, starring Shirley
MacLaine and Marcello Mastroianni. Portman went on to write the music for Ethan
Frome, Benny & Joon, and The Joy Luck Club, all released in 1993. The latter
told the stories of four Chinese immigrant families in San Francisco, giving her
an opportunity to work with ethnic music influences. (Her later work on 1998s
Beloved featured no traditional European instruments, at the request of director
Jonathan Demme.) The fanciful comedy Sirens, starring Hugh Grant, followed in
1994, and in 1995 Portman married film director Uberto Pasolini and started a
family.

Emma Thompsons adaptation of the Jane Austen novel Emma was released in 1996,
and in early 1997 Portman won the Academy Award for Best Original Musical or
Comedy Score for the film, becoming the first female composer to win an Oscar.
She was nominated again for 1999s The Cider House Rules and 2000s Chocolat. Both
of those scores also earned her Grammy nominations for Best Score Soundtrack.
Following Chocolat, Portmans score output in the 2000s included well over a
dozen more features, among them Mike Newells Mona Lisa Smile (2003), Jonathan
Demmes version of The Manchurian Candidate (2004), the family film Because of
Winn-Dixie (2005), and the historical drama The Duchess (2008). In 2010, Portman
was awarded the title of OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire).

Continuing a steady international work schedule, the Wayne Wang China-U.S.
co-production Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2011), an adaptation of Guy de
Maupassants Bel Ami (2012), Diablo Codys Paradise (2013), and the
family-friendly Dolphin Tale 2 (2014) were among her subsequent projects. In
2015, she became the first female composer to win an Emmy, for her work on the
Bessie Smith TV biopic Bessie. Highlights of Portmans film scores in the later
half of the decade included the Jesse Owens story Race (2016) and Lasse
Hallströms A Dogs Purpose (2017).

Tracklist:
01. Rachel Portman - leaves and trees (5:58)
02. Rachel Portman - a gift (2:59)
03. Rachel Portman - much loved (4:22)
04. Rachel Portman - ask the river (4:44)
05. Rachel Portman - still here (2:12)
06. Rachel Portman - flight (4:36)
07. Rachel Portman - apple tree (2:34)
08. Rachel Portman - recollection (5:19)
09. Rachel Portman - juniper (3:42)
10. Rachel Portman - longing for spring (4:18)
11. Rachel Portman - the summer day (5:58)
12. Rachel Portman - way home (3:24)
13. Rachel Portman - childhood (3:24)

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