Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, CBE (29 March 1936 – 24 December 2012)[1] was an Englishcomposer who was famous for his film music and his jazz performance as well as for music for the concert hall. He lived in New York City from 1979 until his death in 2012.
Bennett taught at the Royal Academy of Music between 1963 and 1965, at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, United States from 1970 to 1971, and was later International Chair of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music between 1994 and the year 2000.
Bennett wrote over two hundred works for the concert hall, and fifty scores for film and television. He also wrote and performed jazz songs. In the 1950s he studied in Paris with Pierre Boulez who encouraged him to write serial music, but later his music became more tonal and easier to listen to. He wrote jazz music, film music and concert music for the BBC Proms and the Three Choirs Festival. In 1976 he wrote Zodiac for the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington to celebrate the bicentenary of the United States of America. He dedicated the work to Elisabeth Lutyens. He started to give up serialism and combined various musical techniques to create his own personal style. In 1979 he moved to the United States.