On Friday March 6, 2020 Hastings International Piano Festival will host an evening exploring the career of the composer and Academy Award Winner Rachel Portman. After reading music at the University of Oxford, she went on to write over 100 scores for film, television and theatre, including most recently Mimi and the Mountain Dragon for the BBC.
Rachel became the first female composer to win an Academy Award, which she received for the score of Emma directed by Douglas McGrath. She was also the first female composer to win a Primetime Emmy Award, which she received for the film, Bessie. For the BBC Proms, Rachel was commissioned to write The Water Diviner, a dramatic choral symphony. In September 2019 the BBC Singers commissioned a world premiere, and broadcast on BBC Radio 3, of Earth Song, a 20 minute choral piece.
Rachel Portman is in the midst of several exciting projects, the most recent of which is her forthcoming piano album entitled ‘Ask The River’ being released on Node Records imminently this Spring.
The first single release from this highly anticipated album is leaves and trees.
Please find tickets for An Evening with Rachel Portman which will also feature a pre-concert talk with Group Head of Promotion for Wise Music Group Gill Graham.
Other Wise Music catalogue works performed over the Hastings International Piano Festival:
Thursday March 5 the award-winning singer Claire Martin will sing I Never Went Away and Early to Bed by the Richard Rodney Bennett.
Plus, a dazzling performance by Rufus Wainwright on the February 28.
Image © B Ealovega
