Brought up in the West Country during the War, Richard Rodney Bennett was always fascinated by jazz.    Although his musical training was purely classical (the Royal Academy followed by study with Pierre Boulez in Paris), he earned his living as a jazz pianist while he was still a student. Today, knighted by the Queen for services to music, a composer of symphonies, operas and ballets and an Academy Award nominee for film scores, he still performs regularly at cabaret venues.

His jazz work Jazz Calendar was choreographed by Sir Frederick Ashton for the Royal Ballet, who also later performed his full-length ballet Isadora.   His opera The Mines of Sulphur has recently been revived in the US with great success.   Among his numerous commissions are Actaeon, written for Barry Tuckwell and performed at the BBC Promenade Concerts by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and Sonnets to Orpheus, commissioned by the Edinburgh Festival for performance by Heinrich Schiff and the Hallé Orchestra.  In 1992 he made Proms history by being the first living composer to have two world premieres in one concert, including his Concerto for Stan Getz performed by saxophonist John Harle. In 1995/6 his Partita for Orchestra, commissioned by BT, was played by 16 major British orchestras. His 70^th birthday in Spring 2006 was marked by a Birthday Concert with the BBC Concert Orchestra at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, a Composer Portrait Day with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus at The Barbican and a Wigmore Hall recital of his vocal music, including Songs Before Sleep sung by Jonathan Lemalu, while cellist Paul Watkins premiered Reflections on a Scottish Folksong  with the Philharmonia, commissioned by HRH The Prince of Wales in memory of the Queen Mother, who attended the concert with the Duchess of Cornwall.

He has composed the music for more than forty major films including Four Weddings and a Funeral, Murder on the Orient Express and Far from the Madding Crowd. For television he has written the music for Tender is the Night, The Charmer and Enchanted April amongst many other films. In 2001 he received an Ivor Novello Award for “Best Original Score” for his music for BBC2’s epic production of Gormenghast. He has recently been honoured with the Ivors Classical Music Award for his “exceptional contribution to British music, acknowledged worldwide.”

He has worked with many distinguished singers including Cleo Laine, Annie Ross and Chris Connor. Richard Rodney Bennett now mainly concentrates on his highly successful partnership with Claire Martin, BBC Radio 3’s Jazz Singer of the Year. He has made numerous solo albums, the latest being Words and Music on the Chandos label.  In Summer 2005 Linn Records released When Lights are Low, his first album with Claire Martin.

On the classical side in recent years he has had enormous success in recital with saxophonist John Harle and with the American mezzo-soprano Barbara Rearick.

Richard Rodney Bennett is represented as a classical composer by Gill Graham of Novello & Co