Richard Rodney Bennett was an eclectic composer of serious orchestral
works, jazz songs and music for stage and screen. Of the former, his
most famous compositions include a First Symphony, a piano concerto and
four string quartets. Among the latter are scores for operas, such as
the dramatic "The Mines of Sulphur" and the more light-hearted and
satirical "A Penny for a Song". Born into an artistic family (his
mother was a pianist and composer, his father a writer of children's
books), Bennett wrote a cantata, "Put Away the Flutes", while still in
his early teens. He enrolled at the Royal Academy of Music in London in
1953, graduating three years later. He subsequently continued his
studies under the avant garde French composer/conductor
Pierre Boulez in Paris, eventually
becoming adept at fusing jazz and serial techniques, in addition to
mastering jazz piano.
Comfortable in varied genres, some of his best film music is strongly
jazz tinged, notably
Gentlemenkillers (1963)
and
Das Milliarden Dollar Gehirn (1967).
Other well-known scores include the romantic, melodic themes for
Die Herrin von Thornhill (1967),
Nikolaus und Alexandra (1971)
and
Mord im Orient-Express (1974),
the latter two garnering both Oscar and Grammy Award nominations
("Orient Express" also winning a BAFTA). From 1979, Bennett was based
in New York, where his Second Symphony had been commissioned by
Leonard Bernstein eleven years earlier
(Bernstein eventually became one of his referees for a green card,
Stephen Sondheim, another). Bennett's
predilection for jazz was given free reign in the
1990's, when he began
to play jazz piano in cabaret, including at Ronnie Scott's
Jazz Club in London and a season at the Oak Room of the Algonquin
Hotel, invariably accompanied by vocalists
Claire Martin or
Marian Montgomery. He had also
held the international chair of composition at the Royal Academy of
Music from 1994 to 2000.
