Richard Rodney
Bennett

Sir Richard Rodney Bennett (1936-2012) was an English composer of film, TV and concert music, and also a jazz pianist and occasional vocalist. He was based in New York City from 1979 until his death there in 2012. Bennett was a pupil at Leighton Park School. He later studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Howard Ferguson, Lennox Berkeley and Cornelius Cardew. Ferguson regarded him as extraordinarily brilliant, having perhaps the greatest talent of any British composer in his generation, though lacking in a personal style. During this time, Bennett attended some of the Darmstadt summer courses in 1955, where he was exposed to serialism. He later spent two years in Paris as a student of the prominent serialist Pierre Boulez between 1957 and 1959. He always used both his first names after finding another Richard Bennett active in music.