Walter Afanasieff (born February 10, 1958) is a multiple Grammy-award-winning record producer and songwriter. He is best known for his long association with Mariah Carey, for whom he was producer and co-writer for several years, beginning in 1990. He won the 1999 Grammy Award in the Record of the Year category for producing “My Heart Will Go On” by Celine Dion, and the 2000 Grammy Award for Non-Classical Producer of the Year.

Afanasieff has written and produced music for many other artists, including Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Luther Vandross, Destiny's Child, Kenny G, Michael Bolton, Darren Hayes (Savage Garden), Andrea Bocelli, Johnny Mathis, Kenny Loggins, Barbra Streisand, Christina Aguilera, Ricky Martin, Marc Anthony, Mika, Babyface, Josh Groban, Jordin Sparks, Tina Arena, Lara Fabian, and Leona Lewis.

Afanasieff was born Vladimir Nikitich Afanasieff (Russian: Владимир Никитич Афанасьев) in São Paulo, SP, Brazil to Russian parents Nikita and Tatiana. His father is from Leningrad in the Soviet Union and his mother is from Harbin, China. His parents met in Brazil in the early 1950s.

Mariah Carey (born March 27, 1970) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress. She made her recording debut in 1990 under the guidance of Columbia Records executive Tommy Mottola, and released her self-titled debut studio album, Mariah Carey. The album went multi-platinum and spawned four consecutive number one singles, on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart. Following her marriage to Mottola in 1993, a series of hit records, including Emotions (1991), Music Box (1993) and Merry Christmas (1994), established her position as Columbia's highest-selling act. Daydream (1995), made music history when the second single, "One Sweet Day" a duet with Boyz II Men, spent a record sixteen weeks on top of the Billboard Hot 100, and remains the longest running number one song in US chart history. During the recording of the album Carey began to deviate from her pop background, and slowly traversed into R&B and Hip-hop. After her separation from Mottola, this musical change was evident with the release of Butterfly (1997).

Alexander Gershman is an American surgeon (born on May 26, 1961 in Moscow, Russia.) He is considered to be one of the first surgeons in the world to apply the method of laparoscopic surgery and robotic-assisted surgery to urological surgery and is considered one of the world’s leading experts on minimally invasive surgery. After many years teaching, researching and conducting clinical studies on laparoscopic surgery throughout the world, Gershman is in private practice in Beverly Hills, California. His client list includes numerous Hollywood celebrities and professional athletes.

After receiving his M.D. degree from Moscow Medical School in 1984 and his Ph.D. degree from the Moscow Research Institute of Urology, he completed a research fellowship at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Department of Surgery in 1992 and a clinical fellowship at the UCLA Medical Center Department of Urology in 1993.

Gershman holds numerous academic appointments, including: Assistant Clinical Professor at the UCLA School of Medicine Department of Urology and Clinical Faculty at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center Department of Urology. Between 1990 and 1993 he was previously a visiting professor at major hospitals in Vienna, Vancouver, San Diego, Oslo, Gettengem, and Amsterdam and a Clinical Instructor in laparoscopic surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Joshua Winslow "Josh" Groban (born February 27, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, actor, and record producer. His first four solo albums have been certified multi-platinum, and in 2007, he was charted as the number-one best selling artist in the United States with over 21 million records in that country. To date, he has sold over 24 million albums worldwide, and is the top selling classical artist of the 2000s in the US, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Groban originally studied acting, but as his voice changed, it developed into a "significant instrument". Groban attended the Los Angeles High School for the Arts, a free public school where students received a conservatory-style education. His life changed when his vocal coach, Seth Riggs, submitted a tape of Josh singing "All I Ask of You", from The Phantom of the Opera, to Riggs' friend, producer, composer and arranger David Foster. Foster called him to stand in for an ailing Andrea Bocelli to rehearse a duet, "The Prayer," with Celine Dion at the rehearsal for the Grammy Awards in 1998.Rosie O'Donnell immediately invited him to appear on her talk show. Foster asked him to sing at the California Governor's Gray Davis' 1999 inauguration. He was cast on Ally McBeal by the show's creator, David E. Kelley, performing "You're Still You" for the 2001 season finale.

Lara Fabian (born Lara Crokaert, January 9, 1970) is a Belgian-Italian international singer who holds Canadian citizenship. Multilingual, she sings in French, Italian and English. She has also sung in Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Hebrew, Greek, and German.

She has sold over 10 million records worldwide.^{[citation needed]} She is a lyric soprano with a vocal range that spans four octaves from E-flat 3 to G#6 in live performances, and has reached up to A5.

Born to a Belgian father and a Sicilian mother in Etterbeek, Belgium, Fabian spent her first five years in her mother's hometown of Catania in Sicily, before moving back to Brussels, Belgium. She began singing, dancing and taking piano lessons at a young age, and began formal music lessons at age eight. She began writing and performing her own songs during her ten years of formal music study. Fabian's songs were influenced by her classical vocal and music theory training, and by contemporary artists such as Barbra Streisand and Queen.^{[citation needed]}