When the lights dim in Old Cabell Hall auditorium this Sunday and the performer steps onto the stage, don't expect a run-of-the-mill, "it-ain't-over-till-the-fat-lady-sings" routine.
William Bennett, who is neither fat nor a lady, will deliver an even bigger shocker: He is an engineer.
An engineer who can sing.
"I grew up singing in church and singing in school," said Bennett, a fourth-year systems engineer due to take his degree this May. "I've been singing seriously for nine years, and only the past four have been dedicated to classical training."
Listening to Bennett talk about his music and seeing the respect he has for it makes it difficult to believe he almost did not continue vocal training when he started college.
"I got here, and I didn't even know if I was going to take voice lessons," Bennett said. "But I ran into a teacher who was pretty inspirational: Bruce Tammen."
He said Tammen really helped him.
"With Bruce, there's no such thing as out of his league, artistically. He always has an opinion, and it's always supported. As a student, it means that there is no ceiling on what I can learn at U.Va."
Bennett's regard for Tammen seems mutual.
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Tammen, a voice teacher and choral conductor in the music department, enthusiastically endorsed the student whom he has taught for four years and conducted in both the Glee Club and University Singers.
"He came here as an E-school student intending to study voice. He had a good background. He called me at home. He was very much an engineer about it -- very organized," Tammen said. "He has an extraordinarily beautiful voice. He is very, very disciplined and hard working. A lot of people who have beautiful voices don't have discipline, but he does."
Bennett said he knows he has been lucky where music is concerned.
"When I came to U.Va. and at my first instincts signed up for voice, I had no idea what I was getting into," he said. "I have been blessed to find a music department that encourages non-music majors to be involved."
"If I had gone to any other big state universities to study engineering," Bennett continued, "If they had a full-sized, undergrad degree in music, a music department primarily focused on music majors, I would have seen a lot of closed doors, regardless of talent."
Instead, Bennett has been allowed the chance to expand his vocal abilities.
"He arrived with a beautiful voice," Tammen remembered, "But really not knowing what to do with it."
"He's kind of old fashioned," he said of Bennett. "He really thinks of teachers as kind of authorities. He comes to you and he expects you to tell him what to do and for you to control what he's getting from you. It's very classical. A student comes in like a blank slate and expects to get written on. It's very unusual these days."
The training has paid off. For the past two years, Bennett has sung with the Robert Shaw Festival Singers at Carnegie Hall, a group composed of 100 teachers and professionals and 20 students.
"While it was out of my league vocally, it's what I like, singing difficult music in one of the world's greatest acoustical spaces," Bennett said. "All in all, it was a great time, just being baptized into the Carnegie Hall experience. When you've experienced that level of singing, you don't want to go back. You want everything to be at that level of singing."
He described the music he will perform this Sunday as "sublime melodies and truly great poetry," but he admitted he did not always appreciate classical vocal music.
"I didn't know I liked classical music," Bennett explained. "I saw it as a stepping stone to pop and musical theater, which I still love, but I no longer view classical music as a stepping stone."
Instead, music is one of two potential career choices -- a choice he said he does not see as a contradiction.
"On the one hand, you see the contradiction," Bennett said. "But you also see that the truly brilliant engineers played the violin, for instance, and the truly great musicians had a capacity for science. In the Glee Club, some of the best and most dedicated singers are the busiest E-schoolers."
In the meantime, Bennett will perform a mix of German "art songs," some American pieces and a Bach aria this Sunday with a solo pianist who has traveled all the way to Virginia to play with Bennett.
"Basically," he added as he described the concert, "What it is is me and a piano. This kind of singing sounds like classical singing. But there is no costume, no running around. You just stand and deliver. There's a kind of respect for the music."
Kit Bridges, the pianist, is an accompanist and vocal coach from DePaul University in Chicago.
Above all, even if singing seems like a 180-degree turn from his science-oriented major, Bennett sees his music as a form of communication.
"Ultimately, it's about communicating. Communicating some kind of passion, some kind of love or hate," he said.
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