User:BillBennett156/William Bennett (oboist)

William Robert Bennett (born May 31, 1956, in New York City) is the Principal Oboist of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, a position he has held since 1987. Mr. Bennett joined the orchestra in 1979 as Assistant Principal to Marc Lifschey, following studies with Robert Bloom at Yale University (graduating in 1978) and the Juilliard School of Music (where he completed the first year of a Master's Degree in 1979). Mr. Bennett grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, and attended Worthington Hooker Elementary School, the Sheraton Middle School and the Hopkins School (also the alma mater, a century earlier, of the famous American iconoclast, Charles Ives, who also went on to Yale). "Bill" Bennett's father, William Ralph Bennett, Jr., was a physics professor at Yale and the inventor of the Helium Neon laser (his grandfather, William Ralph Bennett, Sr., was an engineer at Bell Laboratories who did pioneering work in electrical noise and signal transmission). Bill's mother, Frances Ellen Commins, the daughter of Random House Editor Saxe Commins, was an English teacher and the Director of the Independent Studies program for Hamden Public High School. Mr. Bennett's two sister's, Jean Bennett Maguire (born 1954) and Nancy Bennett (1958), have also enjoyed notable careers, Jean as a bio-geneticist specializing in the function of the human eye (now a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania) and Nancy as a creative director and business woman in film and video (based in Los Angeles).