A composer of film and television music in his own right, Nic Raine is best known among colleagues for his decades of work as an orchestrator and conductor of film scores. He collaborated with John Barry for over 20 years, and his other credits span Vangelis, Paul McCartney, and Wallace & Gromit.

Born in London, England, Raine studied piano, organ, guitar, and double bass in his youth. He began to find work orchestrating music for the screen in the early '80s, eventually landing a position in the music department of the James Bond film A View to Kill, released in 1985. It was his first of many jobs orchestrating for composer John Barry, and included the Bond film The Living Daylights (1987), Chaplin (1992), and Cry the Beloved Country (1995). During that period, he orchestrated many other projects, including the Liverpool Oratorio (1991) for Carl Davis and Paul McCartney, and Wallace & Gromit animated shorts.

Raine composed music of his own for several film-themed TV documentaries in the '90s, including an episode of PBS' American Masters on D.W. Griffith. Similarly, in 2000, scored the Turner Classic Movies documentary Lon Chaney: A Thousand Faces. Among assignments the following year, he orchestrated John Barry's music for the Michael Apted drama Enigma. He was also a key architect in a new digital recording of Barry's complete score to The Lion in Winter, orchestrating and conducting the City of Prague Symphony Orchestra. It was released on CD by Silva America. His other reconstruction and re-recording projects have included Charlie Chaplin shorts, Miklos Rozsa’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, and Barry films such as Robin Marian.

Highlights of his orchestrations in the 2000s include Alexander (2004), The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), and Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008). In 2010, Raine co-founded the Klassik Radio Pops Orchestra in Germany, and his composing work could be heard in the Swiss thriller The Impasse of Desire. He also wrote original scores for a handful of German films including 2012's Shores of Hope (Wir Wollten Aufs Meer) and the 2013 made-for-TV movie The Beautiful Spy. In 2014, he released an album of "music inspired by the pure soul of animals" titled Anima Pura for the New World Music label. Subsequent film work included conducting and orchestrations for Shigeru Umebayashi's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (2016). ~ Marcy Donelson, Rovi