Richard Rodney Bennett

Having recently completed a triumphant engagement with Pinky Winters, English composer/performer Richard Rodney Bennett returns to Danny’s Skylight Room for an open run. Bennett has written the scores for such films as Enchanted April, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Murder on the Orient Express, and the Oscar-nominated Far from the Madding Crowd. Among present-day musicians, there can be few more versatile than Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, and nonebetter at everything he does: composing for concerts and films, playing the piano in contemporary music and jazz idioms, singing and playing classical showtunes in cabarets like Danny’s. For many years, all these activities seemed tightly compartmentalized, but now — perhaps with the help of his moving to New York City in 1979, away from the pernicious British habit of pigeonholing — they have proved capable of feeding fruitfully into each other. This series of performances stresses Bennett’s love of cabaret and jazz.