Richard Rodney Bennett is a jazz pianist, singer, and composer of Jazz Calendar, which was commissioned by the British Broadcast Corporation in 1964 and to which Sir Frederick Ashton choreographed a full-scale ballet of the same name for the Royal Ballet in 1967. His other key works include Sonnets to Orpheus (1979), Symphony No. 3 (1987), Variations on a Nursery Tune (1992), and Concerto for Stan Getz (1990). Trained in London at the Royal Academy of Music and in Paris as the first student of Pierre Boulez, he was the recipient of the Arnold Bax Society Prize in 1964 and the Ralph Vaughan Williams Award for Composer of the Year in 1965. Mr. Bennett was composer-in-residence at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. from 1970 to 1971 and Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music from 1963 to 1965. In addition, he has composed music for numerous films, including Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Enchanted April (1991), and Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994). For his services to music, Mr. Bennett was made a Commander of the British Empire in 1977 and knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1998.