composer

Michael Finnissy is one of England’s foremost composers, educators and pianists. Finnissy has been featured composer at the Bath, Huddersfield, and Almeida festivals, and his works are widely performed and broadcast worldwide. In February 1999 a festival at Harvard University, Boston, was devoted to his music, and several world premieres took place at the 1999 Music Factory Festival in Bergen, Norway. 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.

Finnissy created the music department of the London School of Contemporary Dance,  and has taught at Dartington Summer School, Winchester College, Royal College of Music, Royal Academy 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, and is an honorary member of New Music Brighton. In 1999 he was made Professor of Composition at the University of Southampton. 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.

Finnissy's epic piano cycle, The History of Photography in Sound, the product of several years' work and lasting over five hours, received its complete premiere in January 2001 at the hands of Ian Pace. History's fame has been increasing ever since with numerous performances, both of the complete cycle or individual movements, in many countries and by pianists including Nicolas Hodges, Marilyn Nonken, Mark Knoop, and Philip Howard. He has composed a number of other infamous piano cycles including Verdi Transcriptions, Gershwin Arrangements, Folklore, and English Country-Tunes.

Concerts with Chronology Arts

Crush