Richard Rodney Bennett
Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, CBE (born March 29, 1936, Broadstairs, Kent, England) is a British composer renowned for his film scores and his jazz performance as much as for his challenging concert works. He has lived in New York City since 1979. As one of Britain's most respected and versatile musicians, Bennett has produced over two hundred works for the concert hall, and fifty scores for film and television, as well as having been a writer and performer of jazz songs for fifty years. Studies with Boulez in the 1950s immersed him in the techniques of the European avant-garde, though he subsequently developed his own distinctive dramato-abstract style. ...show more
Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, CBE (born March 29, 1936, Broadstairs, Kent, England) is a British composer renowned for his film scores and his jazz performance as much as for his challenging concert works. He has lived in New York City since 1979. As one of Britain's most respected and versatile musicians, Bennett has produced over two hundred works for the concert hall, and fifty scores for film and television, as well as having been a writer and performer of jazz songs for fifty years. Studies with Boulez in the 1950s immersed him in the techniques of the European avant-garde, though he subsequently developed his own distinctive dramato-abstract style.
In recent years, he has adopted an increasingly tonal idiom. Despite his early studies in modernist techniques, Bennett's tastes are catholic, and he has written in a wide range of styles, being particularly fond of jazz. Early on, he found success by writing music for feature films, although he considered this to be subordinate to his concert music. Nevertheless, he has continued to write music for films and television; among his best-known scores are the Doctor Who story The Aztecs (1964), Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Nicholas and Alexandra (1971, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Enchanted April (1992) and Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994).
He is also a prolific composer of orchestral works, piano solos, choral works and operas. Despite this eclecticism, Bennett's music rarely involves crossover of styles.. ...show less
