This year she was invited by Academy Award-winning Indian composer A.R. Rahman to sing "Zariya," one of his compositions.
She skipped from era to era, from composer to composer, singing each aria and song with the same breezy lyricism, indulging herself whenever she wanted in order to prolong a melodic phrase or ease up to a high note.
I mean, even the pop composers, they have to sing.
But when they come out to sing composer Joe Greene's dazzling harmonies and perform John Todd's kicky choreography, they're four lovely, pony-like women with sparkly evening gowns and flowing topknots (Brielle Batino, Stephanie Hayslip, Shelley Regner and Charlotte Mary Wen, in costumes by Michael Mullen).
Tessa Souter, a British vocalist who lives in New York, recently played a couple of dates at the Union of Composers and was happy to sing the praises of her Russian backing band: "They were great.
Singers with bigger, more naturally Straussian voices tend to sing the Composer.
One of Ms. Bampton's fellow students at Curtis was the composer Samuel Barber, who enlisted her to sing in the New York premiere of his vocal chamber work "Dover Beach" in 1933.
The song that she is perhaps most closely associated with, however, is Irving Berlin's "God Bless America," which she introduced on Armistice Day, 1938, and for which the composer granted her exclusive rights to sing on the air for some time.
Russell, he recounts, went to Leonard Bernstein's office at the Osborne to sing for the composer before being cast in his 1953 musical "Wonderful Town".
"Benson's new service was more than just an excuse to sing carols," says composer Howard Goodall, who has made a BBC television documentary about Christmas carols.
