He was principal violist of the Northern Sinfonia Orchestra and a member of the Alberni String Quartet.
In 1952 he won an open scholarship to the Royal Manchester College of Music to study the viola with Paul Cropper.
Bennett's Viola Concerto received its first performance on 3 July 1973 at the York Festival with Best as soloist, with the Northern Sinfonia Orchestra conducted by Rudolf Schwarz.
[8][1] In May 1977 he performed the Malcolm Arnold Viola Concerto at the Queen Elizabeth Hall with the composer conducting the London Mozart Players.
[9] He made numerous recordings with the Alberni Quartet and as a soloist, recording Benjamin Britten’s Lachrymae for Viola and String Orchestra and Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Flos Campi with the English String Orchestra.