Richard Rodney Bennett: Knight of two kingdoms

Composer of award-winning classical works and Oscar-nominated film scores, Richard Rodney Bennett is equally feted in the world of jazz. And he won't even expect you to call him 'Sir'. Sholto Byrnes meets him

How many performers who take the stage at Pizza on the Park, the cabaret venue in Knightsbridge, London, have studied with Pierre Boulez? Or have three Oscar nominations? Or have taken advice from Paul McCartney on how to conduct themselves when being knighted? Earlier this month, one such performer drew up the piano stool, introduced himself and then launched into a relaxed set of jazz standards, his deep, brown-toned voice drawing the audience into the world of Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer, George Gershwin and, of course, Rodney Bennett. For Sir Richard Rodney Bennett (he never uses the title, not even to get a good table in a restaurant) is a musician of rare breadth and one of the very few to enjoy successful and separate careers in genres so often divided by unbridgeable chasms.

Friends who know the classical Bennett, the man who won the Arnold Bax Society prize and then the Ralph Vaughan Williams award for composer of the year in two successive years, were surprised when he started his annual trips back from his adopted New York home to preside over residences at Pizza on the Park. "People used to come in from the other world as if they were looking at me in the zoo," says Bennett, settling into a red leather banquette at London's Met Bar. "They'd say, 'Do you know? I really enjoyed that!'"

But for him the two worlds ran in parallel from a very early age. Bennett's mother was a pupil of Gustav Holst, specialising in Debussy and Ravel. The young Richard, who started playing the piano "as soon as I could stand on my own two feet" and was obviously gifted with an incredible ear, imitated what he heard, composing impressionistic pieces at the keyboard. At the same time he picked up the music of the swing era from the radio and the cinema. "On the new Johnny Mercer record I've known at least eight of the tunes since I was a little boy," he says. "Songs such as 'Skylark' and 'Laura' are like books on the shelf – every few years you take them down and re-read them, because they're your upbringing."

After studying at the Royal Academy of Music, during which time he earned money playing with a jazz trio at the Royal College of Art – "it was the hip place in those days, very far out" – Bennett became the first pupil to be taught by Pierre Boulez, at the time the daring provocateur of contemporary music. "I was in love with his music, so I wrote to him: 'Dear M. Boulez, will you give me lessons?', and he replied: 'Yes.'" So off to Paris went the 19-year-old Englishman from Broadstairs. "All the lessons were in French, which was kind of scary. He could speak English, but he wouldn't. What Boulez taught me – he was a very tough teacher – was not to write like him. He taught me to find my own voice."

After 18 months in Paris, Bennett woke one morning knowing it was time to go home, and left instantly. Since then he has written a substantial body of classical works, numerous film scores, including Murder on the Orient Express, Far from the Madding Crowd and Four Weddings and a Funeral, and accompanied jazz singers such as Cleo Laine and Marion Montgomery, as well as singing and playing one-man shows. But the process of writing is still a labour, albeit of love.

"I still use pencil and paper. Composing gets harder. I started writing when I was six. I'm 66 now. That's 60 years of practice, and it doesn't get easier." I ask Bennett if themes ever come to him in his sleep, as McCartney says "Yesterday" did to him. "That would be a useful kind of dream," he ripostes. "I dream about performing, but that's always a disaster – you know, you're in your underwear or something. I tried to write music when I was stoned once, but I couldn't get the pencil on the line."

One gets the sense that, although an easygoing and charming man, Bennett feels there is no alternative to putting in the work if the result is to be worthwhile. "When I started writing film music, there was an element of snobbery about it, but all the English composers, Walton and Vaughan Williams, wrote for film. Now it's computer-infested. People with no talent at all churn out computer music because they can work a program. I can vote in the Oscars, so I get sent about 60 pictures a year. In most I become aware after 20 minutes that there's a trickle of music going on, completely characterless. It doesn't contribute anything; it's just expected. And it's completely unhealthy. When I write for a film, I try to find places where I can add something, and never do that elevator thing."

Bennett has lessened his workload of late, but still takes on commissions from a sense of duty as a composer. "My interest is in writing for instruments that need a repertoire. I'm doing a trombone concerto for the Swedish trombonist Christian Lindbergh. I'll do that because there are lots of violin concertos but they need one for trombones. Similarly, I'm writing a song-cycle for Jonathan Lemalu, a Samoan singer. There's not much for the bass-baritone. And writing for a dazzling young artist – how can you not want to do that?"

In his own time, Bennett pursues two of his passions – abstract painting and cookery. In both he is shy of public exhibition, although clearly quite proud of his prowess. "I love cooking," he says cheerily. "I'd much rather teach it than composition."

Bennett has his caveats about the state of contemporary music. He thinks the freedom from prescribed form that young classical writers enjoy is good, but contrasts it with the discipline of following in the footsteps of Stockhausen and Schoenberg – "It sorted the men from the boys," he says with relish. He laments the influence of the huge record companies. "You worry about the way stars are promoted. Diana Krall and Norah Jones – they're good, but they're not that good." He does not think anyone is writing the new standard repertoire. "Composers like Gershwin and Arlen were writing blueprints for creativity. You can't take the tunes written now out of their context."

But he is an optimist, pleased that old friends such as André Previn, for whom he wrote his Four Piece Suite for two pianos, are embracing all their endeavours. "It's very nice he's come back to jazz without having to put it in quotation marks." Last month, Bennett went to hear Claire Martin, whose recent album features Bennett's string arrangements, sing at Ronnie Scott's. He was accompanied by the composer Mark-Anthony Turnage.

"There's a whole generation of musicians who've grown up without the prejudices of yesteryear," he says. "It used to be the jazzers and the classical, but it's not any more." Since Bennett never accepted that divide, was he a man ahead of his time? If so, judging by the spring in this youthful 66-year-old's step, the man Americans often call "Sir Bennett" will have a long time to enjoy the arrival of his time – and his audiences will hear plenty more of his life-affirming, joyous music. "I'm having a wonderful time," he says. No one who saw him at Pizza on the Park would doubt it.

Richard Rodney Bennett's 'Way Ahead of the Game: the lyrics of Johnny Mercer' is released on Sanctuary Classics next month