Michael Finnissy
Michael Finnissy (born March 17, 1946 in London ) is an English composer, pianist and music teacher.
Finnissy studied composition with Bernard Stevens and Humphrey Searle and piano with Edwin Benbow and Ian Lake at the Royal College of Music . With an Octavia travel grant, he continued his training with Roman Vlad in Italy. During his studies he worked as a piano accompanist for dance classes with Maria Zybina , John O'Brian , Kathleen Crofton and Matt Mattox , among others . After completing his studies, he continued to work as a freelancer and at the London School of Contemporary Dance . There he founded the music department and worked with choreographers such as Jane Dudley and Anna Sokolow , Richard Alston , Siobhan Davies , Jackie Lansley and Fergus Early .
He made his debut as a pianist at the Galerie Schwarzes Kloster in Freiburg im Breisgau, where he performed works by Howard Skempton and Oliver Knussen in addition to his own compositions . This was followed by appearances - often with his friend Brian Ferneyhough - at the Gaudeamus Music Weeks (1969 and 1973), the Festival international d'art contemporain de Royan (1974, 1975 and 1976) and the Donaueschinger Musiktage . Composers such as Elizabeth Lutyens , Judith Weir , James Dillon , Oliver Knussen, Nigel Osborne , Chris Newman , Howard Skempton and Andrew Toovey wrote works for him. Since the late 1960s he was a member, and later artistic director of the by James Clarke and Richard Emsley founded ensembles suoraan , since 1987 Member of Andrew Tooveys ensemble Ixion .
Finnissy has worked as a music teacher at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music , Winchester College , Chelsea College of Arts , the University of Essex and the University of Southampton and as a guest lecturer and musician-in-residence at the Katholieke, among others Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), at the Victorian College of Arts and with the East London Late Starters Orchestra . From 1990 to 1998 he was president and then honorary member of the International Society for New Music .
In his compositions, Finnissy - alongside Richard Barrett , Ferneyhough, his pupil Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf and others - is one of the representatives of complexism , a music that is characterized by great density and rapid succession of musical events, complicated rhythms and constant transformation. His works have been performed at the Bath, Huddersfield and Almeida festivals, among others. The Harvard University gave him 1,999 own festival; in the same year several world premieres of the Music Factory Festival took place in Bergen. Ian Pace performed all of his piano works in 1996, he also premiered the six-hour piano work The History of Photography in Sound in 2001 and presented its first complete recording. In 2010, Finnissy's catalog of works already comprised more than 300 titles.
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- Universal Edition - Michael Finnissy
- Deutschlandfunk - Michael Finnissy: Complex music about the history of photography
- BBC - Michael Finnissy
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Finnissy, Michael |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English composer, pianist and music teacher |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 17, 1946 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | London |