Robert Russell Bennett News
American composer, arranger (1894-1981)
Commemorations 2024 (Birth: Robert Russell Bennett)
- piano
- classical music
- United States of America
- conductor, pianist, composer, music arranger
Last update
2024-03-28
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2022-07-31 09:29:00
South Pacific: Stupendous performances from Julian Ovenden & Gina Beck head this striking new version of Rodgers & Hammerstein's classic
[…] not only needs to be able to hold a tune, they need to be able to sing expressively. And one of the strengths of the production was the way it recognised this. All four principals, Ovenden, Beck, Ampil, Houchen really sang their music, supported by lavish orchestrations using a 16 piece band. This was big stuff, yet it was dramatic too, though I still have a hankering to hear the original Trude Rittmann and Robert Russell Bennett orchestrations.At the show's climactic moment, when Ovenden's Emile sang 'This nearly was mine', Ovenden didn't give us a belted out torch song, his performance was fuelled by anger and bitterness, combined with a finely sung line. A truly remarkable performance, and a mesmerising one. From the opening notes of the Twin Solioquies for Nellie and Emile, which lead into 'Some Enchanted Evening' it was clear that Ovenden's voice was part of the drama, he […]
2021-09-10 23:39:25
[…] moving ounce. In one sense little might seem comparable between Bullock at the Bowl and Tines at First Congregational. Bullock was but part of a program of music by Gershwin and three neglected Black American composers — Bonds, Ulysses Kay and William Grant Still — conducted by Thomas Wilkins. Bullock’s contribution was but five Gershwin and Bonds songs. Elsewhere the program included such popular Gershwin favorites as Robert Russell Bennett’s arrangement of excerpts from “Porgy and Bess” in a “Symphonic Picture” and Variations on “I Got Rhythm” for piano and orchestra that got canceled when the soloist Aaron Diehl had to leave the stage shortly after beginning because he didn’t feel well. Tines, on the other hand, crafted his “MASS” recital, with pianist Adam Nielsen, as what the singer called a “queering” of the conventional mass. Queering meant […]
2021-09-10 23:39:00
[…] moving ounce. In one sense little might seem comparable between Bullock at the Bowl and Tines at First Congregational. Bullock was but part of a program of music by Gershwin and three neglected Black American composers — Bonds, Ulysses Kay and William Grant Still — conducted by Thomas Wilkins. Bullock’s contribution was but five Gershwin and Bonds songs. Elsewhere the program included such popular Gershwin favorites as Robert Russell Bennett’s arrangement of excerpts from “Porgy and Bess” in a “Symphonic Picture” and Variations on “I Got Rhythm” for piano and orchestra that got canceled when the soloist Aaron Diehl had to leave the stage shortly after beginning because he didn’t feel well. Tines, on the other hand, crafted his “MASS” recital, with pianist Adam Nielsen, as what the singer called a “queering” of the conventional mass. Queering meant […]
2021-07-19 08:08:51
Real intimacy: Lerner & Loewe's My Fair Lady in a concert staging at The Grange Festival
[…] dialogues in drawing rooms, means that presenting My Fair Lady as a concert staging works rather better than many other 1950s American musicals, and has the big advantage that we do not have to suffer the amazing dancing Cockneys.The Grange Festival presented Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady in a concert staging directed by Guy Unsworth with Alfonso Casado Trigo conducting the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra gloriously live on stage and playing the orchestrations by Robert Russell Bennett and Philip J Lang (if any musical needs to have a full orchestra it is surely this one). Ellie Laugharne played Eliza with Steven Pacey as Henry Higgins, Peter Polycarpou as Doolittle, Susie Blake as Mrs Higgins / Mrs Pearce / Cockney Woman, Richard Suart as Colonel Pickering and Nadim Naaman as Freddy Eynsford-Hill. The orchestra spread out at the rear of the stage, with cast and chorus sitting in […]
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