Carl Vine AO is one of Australia's best known and often performed composers, with an impressive orchestral catalogue featuring seven symphonies and eleven concertos. His piano music is performed frequently around the world and recordings of his music on more than 60 CDs play regularly on Australian radio. He has an extensive range of chamber music alongside various work for film,  Carl is also Artistic Director of the Huntington Estate Music Festival, Australia's most prestigious chamber music festival. 

Elena Davidovna Kats-Chernin was born in Tashkent (now the capital of independent Uzbekistan – but then part of the Soviet Union). She studied at the Yaroslavl Music School and the Gnessin State Musical College in Moscow from age 14, and migrated to Australia in 1975, continuing her studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, under Richard Toop (composition) and Gordon Watson (piano). She also participated in the Darlinghurst underground theatre scene, with groups such as Cabaret Conspiracy, Fifi Lamour, Boom Boom La Burn and others, often under the name Elena Kats.

Koehne was born in Adelaide. He completed his undergraduate and post-graduate studies at the Elder Conservatorium of Music in that city, studying composition with Richard Meale – a pupil of Winifred Burston, who had been a pupil of Ferruccio Busoni. In 1982 he won the Young Composers Prize at that year's Adelaide Festival, gaining him national attention for his orchestral work Rainforest.[1] In 1984, Koehne was awarded a Harkness Fellowship to work at the School of Music, Yale University.