Douglas Bennett has been chairman of the Jamaica Musical Theatre Company since 1981. - Photos by Colin Hamilton/Freelance Photographer
This is the first of a two-part series on music director Douglas Bennett. Part two will be carried next week.
Although the figures only begin to tell the story, they are impressive.
Douglas Bennett has been chairman of the Jamaica Musical Theatre Company (JMTC) since 1981. In 1983, he founded and has been chairman of its daughter company, the Jamaica Junior Theatre (JJT), since then.
The 2009 musical, Beauty and the Beast is the 139th production of the combined companies. Fifty of those were full musicals by the JMTC. The 26 full musicals by the JJT have featured the talents of some 500 children and teens.
There have been numerous other special operatic concerts as well as 23 concert series with four or five individual concerts in each series. The combined companies have earned 52 theatre industry awards (mostly Actor Boy awards), 22 of which were earned by the JJT.
The list of awards include three Best Productions awards, and several more for Best Musical. Bennett has been both producer and musical director for most of the shows.
Other figures could be added to the list, such as the dozens of charities which have received millions of dollars in donations from the two not-for-profit theatre companies. The money has come from the tens of thousands of patrons who have enjoyed the companies' shows over the decades.
Sports-loving child
Douglas Bennett (right) and Peter Haley (left) share a light moment with the cast of 'Beauty and the Beast'. Bennett is the musical director and producer of the play and Haley the director.
But the figures do only begin to tell the story of the long-serving captain of Jamaica's only musical theatre companies, the Musgrave medallist who in December 1996 was inducted into the JMTC Hall of Fame.
A good place to begin the story would be with Bennett as a sports-loving child in his native Scotland. At the time, he told The Gleaner, "I was so involved in tennis and rugby that no one ever seemed to suggest that I might have some voice tuition," and this despite the fact that when he sang at family functions "everyone seemed to applaud," and the quality of his voice caused "a shock or two" at his senior school's annual singing competition.
Still, because both his parents loved classical singing, he grew to love it too and would often fall asleep, he said, "listening to Caruso singing Celeste Aida! or John McCormack singing Macushla or Gwen Catley's brilliant There's a Voice Within My Heart or the wonderful sounds of the Glasgow Orpheus Choir singing All in an April Evening".
Eventually, he was "well and truly hooked" on the genre and spending all his pocket money to build a record collection.
Small choir
In 1954 he was sent to Port of Spain, Trinidad, by the Standard Life insurance organisation and during the 10 years he spent there he co-founded a small choir called the Linden Singers which performed with some distinction in the Trinidad Music Festival.
"There was, however, little opportunity for self-development as a singer," he said, and so he was delighted when he and his family moved to Jamaica (where they have lived ever since) to discover the Jamaica School of Music.
He enrolled and from 1968 until 1972 studied under the tutelage of the famous Polish operatic bass Marian Nowakowski and later with Jeanette Cross and Robert Williams.
During this five-year period, he developed his acclaimed bass-baritone voice and won 21 of the music school's solo singing competitions in the categories of Opera, Oratorio, Lieder, English Song and Bach. In all five years, he won the coveted Roderick Jones Cup for Most Outstanding Male Voice, sharing this title twice with Cecil Cooper and once with the celebrated opera singer Willard White, now Sir Willard.
After gaining his LRSM and FTCL singing diplomas, he appeared regularly onstage for many years in performances of opera, oratorio, musical theatre and on the concert stage. In opera and musical theatre, his principal stage roles included Leporello in Don Giovanni, Mephistopheles in Faust, Kecal in The Bartered Bride, Sarastro in The Magic Flute and Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof.
Oratorio repertoire
In performance of oratorio, he sung on many occasions with the St Andrew Singers, the Jamaica Philharmonic Orchestra and 'Y' Choral Group and the Diocesan Festival Choir, and his extensive oratorio repertoire included Messiah, Elijah, The Creation, The Fauré Requiem, Judas Maccabeus, Samson, Bach's Christmas Oratorio, the Childhood of Christ, the St Mark's Passion and The Saviour.
In the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission's Jamaica Festival music competitions, he became a multiple gold medallist and a multiple winner of the Edgar Wallace Trophy for the Best Singing Performance in Festival. When he entered the Jamaica Music Teachers Music Festival, at which the renowned late Dr Havelock Nelson adjudicated, he won outright all three solo singing categories in which he participated.
Good recitalist
An audience-delighting recitalist in Jamaica and abroad, he was awarded a bronze Musgrave Medal in 1995 in the field of music and for his contribution to theatre in Jamaica.
In view of his tremendous success in all three areas, The Sunday Gleaner asked Bennett whether he preferred performing or directing and producing.
"The two areas of endeavour create quite different mindsets," he replied. "Performing is a personal challenge and you become anxious and determined to develop your own particular ability to the fullest extent possible.
"In directing, you are doing the tutoring rather than receiving tuition and you can find yourself dealing with many different talent levels and personalities in your attempts to make a show the best it can possibly be from the talent pool available.
"Producing is quite different again and is an awesome task with a wide range of responsibilities, especially if producing is combined with being business manager. Now you are responsible for the creation of a realistic budget and effectively you finance the show and monitor it."
The figures and the numerous awards show that Bennett has been very effective indeed.