Composer: Michael Finnissy

Read more about Michael Finnissy

Michael Finnissy was born in Tulse Hill, London in 1946. He was a Foundation Scholar at the Royal College of Music, London, where he studied composition with Bernard Stevens and Humphrey Searle, and piano with Edwin Benbow and Ian Lake. Afterwards, he studied in Italy with Roman Vlad.

Finnissy created the music department of the London School of Contemporary Dance, and has been associated as composer with many British dance companies including London Contemporary Dance Theatre, Ballet Rambert, Strider, and Second Stride. He has taught at Dartington Summer School, Winchester College, the junior department of the Royal College of Music, Chelsea College of Art, and is guest lecturer at many colleges and universities. He has also been musician in residence to the Victorian College of the Arts, the City of Caulfield in Australia, and the East London Late Starters Orchestra. In 1999 he was made Professor of Composition at the University of Southampton.

Finnissy has been featured composer at the Bath, Huddersfield, and Almeida festivals, and his works are widely performed and broadcast worldwide. As a pianist he is particularly associated with the commissioning and performing of new British work; composers who have written pieces specially for him include Elizabeth Lutyens, Judith Weir, James Dillon, Oliver Knussen, Nigel Osborne, Chris Newman, Howard Skempton, and Andrew Toovey, with some of these works having been recorded for NMC. NMC has also recorded his major orchestral score Red Earth and choral music sung by EXAUDI.

In 1990 Finnissy was appointed President of the International Society of Contemporary Music. He was re-elected in 1993, and in 1998 was made an honorary member of the ISCM. In 1999 he was appointed Senior Fellow of the KBC-chair in New Music at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium for two years. The appointment included the commission for a work for the Beethoven Academie, Onbevooroordeeld Leven. 1996, Finnissy's fiftieth birthday year, saw recitals of the complete piano music by Ian Pace, a disc of chamber works on NMC - Mars+Venus, performed by IXION - and the publication of Unknown Ground (Ashgate), a study of Finnissy's music. A cycle of CDs on the Metier label which includes Folklore, Gershwin Arrangements, works for string quartet, Seven Sacred Motets, and most recently Kulamen Dilan has been released to great critical acclaim.

NMC releases on which this composer appears:

NMC D002 Michael Finnissy, piano Piano recital

NMC D019 Wavesongs Alexander Baillie, cello/ Andrew Ball, piano

NMC D040S Michael Finnissy Red Earth

NMC D043 Michael Finnissy Mars+Venus

NMC D051 A Round-up of NMC Sampler

NMC D057 Spectrum Thalia Myers, piano

NMC D057 Spectrum Thalia Myers, piano

NMC D069 Prime Cuts Sampler

NMC D079 Corrado Canonici, double bass A roaring flame

NMC D080 Bright Future Schubert Ensemble

NMC D092 Andrew Sparling New works for clarinet

NMC D107 Trio Fibonacci Independence Quadrilles

NMC D110 EXAUDI Michael Finnissy

NMC D150 NMC Songbook Songs commissioned for the 20th Anniversary of NMC