Michael Finnissy

Was born in Tulse Hill, London in 1946. He studied composition with Bernard Stevens and Humphrey Searle, and piano with Ec Benboe and Ian Lake at the Royal College of Music in London. He continued his musical with Roman Vlad in Italy. He created the music department of the London School of Contemporary Dance, and has been associated as composer with many dance companies including London Contemporary Dance Theatre and Ballet Rambert. He has taught at Dartington Summer School, Winchester College, junior department of the Royal College of Music and is guest lecturer at many colleges and universities. He has also been musician in residence to the Victoria College of the Arts, city of Caulfield in Australia and is currently teaching composition at the University of Sussex, where he is a Research Fellow, and the Royal Academy of Music, London. From 1990­1997 Michael Finnissy was the first British president of the International Society for Contemporary Music (iscm) and in 1998 he was appointed an Honorary Life Member, the only British composer to receive the honour since Ralph Vaughan Williams.
He has been featured composer at the Bath, Huddersfield and Almeida Festivals and his music is performed and broadcast worldwide. In 1996, to mark Finnissy1s 50th birthday, Ian Pace performed his complete piano music, filling six concerts, and has since recorded the hour long works Verdi Transcriptions and Folklore for Metier Records. Other recordings include Red Earth (bbc Symphony Orchestra; nmc), Banumbirr (Sydney Alpha Ensemble, abc Classics), English Country Tunes (played by Finnissy himself for Etcetera Records), Mars + Venus and other chamber (ixion Ensemble for nmc) and the complete works for string quartet (Kreutzer Quartet for Metier Records).

Banumbirr
The piece was written during my first visit to Australia in 1982, and was inspired by an Aboriginal Australian bark-painting of Banumbirr, the morning star. Beyond trying to find ­ emphatically ­ musical Ogestures1 within myself that corresponded to the hieratic (totemic/symbolic) patterns and deliberately restricted colours of that painting, there are no other connections with the indigenous art of Australia. The work is dedicated to Robert and Merryn Smallwood; the former conducted the first performance at Melba Hall, in the University of Melbourne on 16 May 1982.
Michael Finnissy