A native of New York City, where he was born in 1932,[2] he was on the faculties of Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (1965–1978) where he held the Kulas Endowed Chair in Music and was chair of the Music Education Department; the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1960–1965); Madison College, Harrisonburg, Virginia (1958–1960); and the Richmond Professional Institute of the College of William and Mary, (1955–1957).
He held the bachelor's degree in music education from the State University of New York at Fredonia, and master's and doctorate degrees in music education from the University of Illinois, where he worked with Charles Leonhard and Harry Broudy.
He was the author and editor of some two dozen other books and has written over 145 articles and chapters on a variety of topics in music and arts education.
He was Director of a three-year research project on the general music curriculum sponsored by the U.S. Office of Education; was a research exchange scholar studying music education practices from Kindergarten through Conservatory in China for a three-month period in 1986, sponsored by the Chinese government and Harvard Project Zero; was for six years Co-Director and Principal Consultant for the teacher education project “Education for Aesthetic Awareness: The Cleveland Area Project for the Arts in the Schools”; and for five years was a member of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Awards Committee for Exemplary School Arts Programs.
Reimer presented many keynote addresses and lectures each year throughout the United States and the world, including appearances in England, Japan, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, South Africa, China, and Australia.
Also in 1997 he was designated the third “Legend of Teaching” in the history of the Northwestern University School of Music.
A special double issue of The Journal of Aesthetic Education, "Musings: Essays in Honor of Bennett Reimer," was published in Winter 2000.
Teachers will have a firm pedagogical base and sensitivity, all will learn music because it helps us develop self-knowledge.