Rachel Portman

Rachel Mary Berkeley Portman,^[1] OBE (born 11 December 1960)^[1] is a British composer, best known for scoring films.

Early life and education

Portman was born on 11 December 1960 in Haslemere in West Sussex, England, the daughter of Penelope (née Mowat) and Berkeley Charles Portman.^[1]

She was educated at Charterhouse School and became interested in music from a young age, beginning composing at the age of 14. ^[2]

After finished school, Portman studied Music at Worcester College, Oxford. It was here that her interest in composing music for films began as she started experimenting with writing music for student films and theatre productions. ^[3]

Career

Rachel Portman's career in music began with writing music for drama in BBC and Channel 4 films such as Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Mike Leigh's Four Days In July and Jim Henson's Storyteller series. ^[4]

Portman has composed the scores for dozens of feature films. An unused score of hers was composed for the film Dangerous Beauty (George Fenton replaced her, but some of her material still remains in the film). For television, she composed the score for all thirteen episodes of Jim Henson's The Storyteller and two episodes of The Jim Henson Hour ("Monster Maker" and "Living with Dinosaurs").

Portman is perhaps best known for her music soundtrack compositions in the movies Chocolat and The Cider House Rules.

Her other works include a children's opera, The Little Prince (which was later adapted for television) and Little House on the Prairie, a musical based upon the Laura Ingalls Wilder books Little House on the Prairie (2008). Portman was commissioned to write a piece of choral music for the BBC Proms series in August 2007.

Awards and honors

She was the first female composer to win an Academy Award in the category of Best Musical or Comedy Score (for Emma in 1996). (Previously, female songwriters Barbra Streisand, in 1977, Buffy Sainte-Marie, in 1983, and Carly Simon, in 1989, each won Oscars, but in the category of Best Original Song). Portman was also nominated for Academy Awards for her scores for The Cider House Rules in 1999 and Chocolat in 2000.

On 19 May 2010, she was honored at the BMI Film & TV Awards with the Richard Kirk Award which is bestowed on composers who have made significant contributions to the realm of film and television music. Portman made BMI history as she became the first woman composer to receive the honor.^[5]

Portman was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2010 New Year Honours.^[6]

Filmography

References

External links

• Official website
• Rachel Portman at the Internet Movie Database
• Rachel Portman at Chester Novello
• Rachel Portman at the Danish Filmmusic Society