Bennett, Robert Russell (1894–1981)

US pianist, conductor, composer, and orchestrator. He studied with his parents and later with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. He played in his father's orchestra as a youth and earned a living as an arranger and orchestrator, becoming one of the most successful in the business; he offered to re-write Stravinsky's Scènes de ballet but the composer refused.

Works opera Maria Malibran (1935); ballet-operetta Endymion (1927); film music Sights and Sounds; Abraham Lincoln Symphony (1931), Charlestown Rhapsody (1926), etc. for orchestra; March for two pianos and orchestra; orchestrations for Show Boat (1927), Oklahoma! (1943), South Pacific (1949), My Fair Lady (1956), and The Sound of Music (1959).