Arthur Benjamin (1893–1960) was another expatriate composer. Though born in Sydney, he grew up in my hometown, Brisbane, until his exceptional talent earned him a scholarship in 1911 to study at London’s Royal College of Music. He studied harmony and counterpoint under Thomas Dunhill, and piano with Frederick Cliffe. Fellow students included Herbert Howells, the ill-fated genius Ivor Gurney, Arthur Bliss, Frederick Thurston, and three of the extraordinary Goossens family—Eugene (violinist, composer, conductor, and later Director of the Sydney Conservatorium), Léon (oboist) and Adolph (hornist). What a lineup! When war broke out three years later, he enlisted to serve in the infantry, but ended up a gunner with the Royal Flying Corps. Four months before the end of the war his plane was shot down over Germany and he was interned, along with Edgar Bainton, in the Ruhleben Camp, where the enlightened commander encouraged cultural pursuits: Bainton started a madrigal society (‘Bainton’s Magpies’), there was an orchestra, and the continuation of British university qualifications was organized and encouraged. Benjamin got on with his composition, but after repatriation he went back to Australia to be a piano professor at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. That didn’t last long though; he returned to London in 1921 and taught at the Royal College. He performed a lot in these RCM years, but in 1938, the year he published his two-piano Jamaican Rumba (based on a folk tune he brought back after examining in the West Indies for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools), he departed for Vancouver, where from 1941 he conducted the CBC Symphony Orchestra, played, composed, taught and gave a series of radio talks, becoming a major figure in Canadian cultural life until his return to London and the Royal College at the end of the war. His works include several operas, a harmonica concerto written, of course, for Larry Adler, vocal works, chamber music (including a really worthwhile Viola Sonata from 1942 that I’ve performed a number of times), film and orchestral music, and music for children. But it’s for the Jamaican Rumba that he was always best known—and that is still the case. The abbreviated solo version was published in 1945.

from notes by Piers Lane © 2013