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Austin Symphonic Band ( https://austinsymphonicband.org/ ). February 1, 2026. ASB performing selected movements from Suite of Old American Dances by Robert Russell Bennett. [NOTE: Click 'more' to read the program notes.] Music Director Dr. Kyle R. Glaser conducting. “These United States” Concert at the Connally HS Performing Arts Center in Austin, TX.

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Suite of Old American Dances by Robert Russell Bennett
00:00:00 1. Cake Walk
00:04:17 2. Schottische
00:07:17 4. Wallflower Waltz
00:11:14 5. Rag

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Video and Sound Production: Eddie Jennings

From the program notes written by Clifton Jones:

Suite of Old American Dances (1949)
Robert Russell Bennett (1894-1981)

Suite of Old American Dances is a classic of the American wind band literature. The work is in five movements, and is reminiscent of the music Bennett heard in dance halls when he was growing up in Kansas City, MO. The work was dedicated to and premiered by the Goldman Band in Central Park, New York City, in 1949.

Bennett says that when he heard the Goldman Band, led by Edwin Franko Goldman at a 1948 Carnegie Hall concert, “… I suddenly thought of all the beautiful sounds an American concert band could make that it hadn’t yet made. That doesn’t mean that the unmade sounds passed in review in my mind at all, but the sounds they made were so new to me after all my years with orchestra, dance bands, and tiny “combos” that my pen was practically jumping out of my pocket begging me to give this great big instrument some more music to play.”

Interestingly, Bennett did not write a full score of the suite. He wrote a condensed “short” score (essentially a piano score), and transposed and copied out the parts individually when he had time to do so between writing orchestrations for Broadway shows and films. A full score to the piece was not created until 1999, nearly 20 years after his passing.

Robert Russell Bennett is considered the dean of American orchestrators; he virtually invented the sound of the Broadway musical. He was born in Kansas City, Missouri, to two professional musicians who taught him piano, violin and trumpet. Bennett moved to New York in 1919 and worked for T.B. Harms, a prominent music publisher. He soon began writing orchestrations for Broadway shows and worked with songwriters Jerome Kern, Richard Rogers and George Gershwin.

The shows for which he created original orchestrations set the standard for the American musical theater. Among these are: Show Boat(1927) by Jerome Kern, Girl Crazy(1930)and Of Thee I Sing (1931) by George and Ira Gershwin, Anything Goes(1934) by Cole Porter, Oklahoma 1943) by Rogers and Hammerstein, Annie Get Your Gun (1946) by Irving Berlin, and My Fair Lady (1956) by Lerner and Lowe. He wrote the orchestrations for all of the Rogers and Hammerstein shows in the 1940’s and ‘50’s, from Oklahoma to The Sound of Music. Bennett also collaborated with Rogers for the 1953 NBC special presentation of Victory at Sea. He scored several of the popular Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers films in the 1930’s, and provided orchestrations for many of the motion picture versions of the shows he had originally scored for Broadway. He won an Oscar for Best Scoring in 1956 for Oklahoma, and a special Tony award in 1957 for his contribution to orchestration. (See his bio on IMDb.)