The River Cam is a tributary of the River Great Ouse in the east of England. The two rivers join to the south of Ely at Pope's Corner. The Great Ouse connects the Cam to England's canal system (via the Middle Level Navigations and the River Nene) and to the North Sea at King's Lynn. The total distance from Cambridge to the sea is about 40 mi (64 km).

In earlier times the Cam was named the Granta, but after the name of the Anglo-Saxon town of Grantebrycge had been modified to Cambridge, the river was renamed to match. It has no connection with the much smaller River Cam in Gloucestershire.

It has been said that the River is the "Granta" above the Silver Street Bridge (in Cambridge) and the "Cam" below it.

An organisation called the Conservators of the River Cam was formed in 1702, charged with keeping the river navigable. The Conservators are responsible for the two locks in and north east of Cambridge: Jesus Lock and Baits Bite Lock. The stretch north (downstream) of Jesus Lock is sometimes called the lower river.

Eric Whitacre (born 2 January 1970 in Reno, Nevada) is an American Grammy award winning composer, conductor and lecturer. He is one of the most popular and performed composers of his generation. In 2008, the all-Whitacre choral CD Cloudburst (released by the British ensemble Polyphony on Hyperion Records) became an international best-seller, topping the classical charts and earning a Grammy nomination. Robert Hollingworth commented: "what hits you straight between the eyes is the honesty, optimism and sheer belief that passes any pretension. This is music that can actually make you smile." In addition to Whitacre's litany of choral and wind ensemble compositions, he is also known for his "Virtual Choir" projects on YouTube, bringing individual voices from around the globe together in a cyber internet choir. His virtual choirs have exposed his music to a new audience and have helped it gain an unprecedented popularity. Whitacre signed a long-term recording deal with Decca in 2010 and continues to develop his award winning musical Paradise Lost. A concert version was given at Carnegie Hall in 2010. Plans for the stage show and soundtrack extend into 2013.

Julian Lloyd Webber (born 14 April 1951) is a British solo cellist who has been described as the "doyen of British cellists".

Julian Lloyd Webber is the second son of the composer William Lloyd Webber and his wife Jean Johnstone (a piano teacher). He is the younger brother of the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. Lloyd Webber was a scholar at the Royal College of Music in London and completed his studies with Pierre Fournier in Geneva in 1973. He made his professional debut at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London in September 1972 when he gave the first London performance of the cello concerto by Sir Arthur Bliss.

Lloyd Webber has collaborated with a wide variety of musicians, including Yehudi Menuhin, Lorin Maazel, Neville Marriner, Georg Solti and Esa-Pekka Salonen as well as Stéphane Grappelli, Elton John, Cleo Laine and Eric Whitacre.

Lloyd Webber has made many recordings, including his BRIT Award winning Elgar Cello Concerto conducted by Yehudi Menuhin (chosen as the finest ever version by BBC Music Magazine), the Dvořák Cello Concerto with Václav Neumann and the Czech Philharmonic, Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations with the London Symphony Orchestra under Maxim Shostakovich and a coupling of Britten's Cello Symphony and Walton's Cello Concerto with Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, which was described by Gramophone magazine as "beyond any rival". He has also recorded several CDs of short pieces for Universal Classics including Made in England, Cello Moods, Cradle Song and English Idyll: "It would be difficult to find better performances of this kind of repertoire anywhere on records of today or yesterday or tomorrow" - Gramophone.