Edmund Finnis (born 1984) is a British

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

of classical and electronic music. His works have been commissioned and performed by orchestras and ensembles including the

Britten Sinfonia Britten Sinfonia is a chamber orchestra ensemble based in Cambridge, UK. It was created in 1992, following an initiative from Eastern Arts and a number of key figures including Nicholas Cleobury, who recognised the need for an orchestra in the ...

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG) is a British chamber ensemble based in Birmingham, England specialising in the performance of new and contemporary music. BCMG performs regularly at the CBSO Centre and Symphony Hall in Birmingham, tour ...

London Sinfonietta The London Sinfonietta is an English contemporary chamber orchestra founded in 1968 and based in London. The ensemble has headquarters at Kings Place and is Resident Orchestra at the Southbank Centre. Since its inaugural concert in 1968—givi ...

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (BBC SSO) is a Scottish broadcasting symphony orchestra based in Glasgow. One of five full-time orchestras maintained by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), it is the oldest full-time professional rad ...

and the

Chicago Symphony Orchestra The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) was founded by Theodore Thomas in 1891. The ensemble makes its home at Orchestra Hall in Chicago and plays a summer season at the Ravinia Festival. The music director is Riccardo Muti, who began his tenure ...

; the pianist

Clare Hammond __NOTOC__ Clare Hammond (born 1985) is a British concert pianist. In 2016, she was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society's Young Artist award. Early life and education Hammond grew up in Nottingham, was educated at Nottingham Girls' High Schoo ...

and the clarinettist Mark Simpson. He was recipient of a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award in 2012 and is currently a Professor of Composition at the

Royal Academy of Music The Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, England, is the oldest conservatoire in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the first Duke of ...

, where his notable students have included William Marsey and

Robin Haigh Robin Haigh (born 1993 in London) is a composer of contemporary classical music. Career In 2017, Robin Haigh won a BASCA British Composer Award at the age of 24 for his recorder quintet, ''In Feyre Foreste''. His piece ''Zorthern'' features o ...

Early life

Finnis was born in

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

, where, as a child, he was a

choirboy A choirboy is a boy member of a choir, also known as a treble. As a derisive slang term, it refers to a do-gooder or someone who is morally upright, in the same sense that " Boy Scout" (also derisively) refers to someone who is considered honor ...

at New College. Finnis went on to study composition with teachers including

Julian Anderson Julian Anderson (born 6 April 1967) is a British composer and teacher of composition. Biography Anderson was born in London. He studied at Westminster School, then with John Lambert at the Royal College of Music, with Alexander Goehr at Cambri ...

Paul Newland Paul Newland is a composer, musician, and founding member of the group out and the electric guitar duo, exquisite corpse (David Arrowsmith/Paul Newland). He studied composition at the Royal Northern College of Music with Anthony Gilbert and visi ...

and

Rozalie Hirs Rozalie Hirs (born 7 April 1965) is a Dutch composer of contemporary classical music and a poet. The principal concerns of her work are the adventure of listening, reading, and the imagination. Biography Rozalie Hirs studied piano and voice fro ...

. He received a Leonard Bernstein Fellowship to study at

Tanglewood Tanglewood is a music venue in the towns of Lenox and Stockbridge in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. It has been the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1937. Tanglewood is also home to three music schools: the T ...

and completed a doctorate at the

Guildhall School of Music and Drama The Guildhall School of Music and Drama is a conservatoire and drama school located in the City of London, United Kingdom. Established in 1880, the school offers undergraduate and postgraduate training in all aspects of classical music and jazz ...

on the subject of distortion in acoustic instrumental music. Finnis also worked as an

amanuensis An amanuensis () is a person employed to write or type what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another, and also refers to a person who signs a document on behalf of another under the latter's authority. In one example Eric Fenby ...

for the composer Jonathan Harvey.

Career

Finnis worked with friend Orlando Higginbottom as part of the latter's dance-pop music act,

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs Orlando Tobias Edward Higginbottom (born 7 March 1986), known professionally as Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs (or TEED), is a British electronic music producer, DJ and singer-songwriter based in the United States. Early life Orlando is ...

, contributing as co-writer to an album, ''Trouble'' released in 2012. From 2013-16 Finnis was composer-in-association with the

London Contemporary Orchestra The London Contemporary Orchestra (LCO), founded in 2008 by Hugh Brunt and Robert Ames, is an ensemble of young musicians whose stated aim is "to explore and promote new music to an increasingly wide audience". LCO staged its inaugural season at ...

. They commissioned and premiered several of Finnis' works, including ''Across White Air'' for solo

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...

with

reverb Reverberation (also known as reverb), in acoustics, is a persistence of sound, after a sound is produced. Reverberation is created when a sound or signal is reflected causing numerous reflections to build up and then decay as the sound is abso ...

, ''Between Rain'' for

string orchestra A string orchestra is an orchestra consisting solely of a string section made up of the bowed strings used in Western Classical music. The instruments of such an orchestra are most often the following: the violin, which is divided into first ...

, and the electronic piece ''Colour Field Painting''. Finnis also has a significant association with elderly new music ensemble the London Sinfonietta who have performed, toured and recorded six of his works, including three that they commissioned: ''Veneer'', ''Unfolds'' and ''Seeing is Flux''. Finnis' duo piece for violin and viola, ''Brother'' was released as an EP in 2019, on NOMAD records, curated by the band

Radiohead Radiohead are an English rock band formed in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke (vocals, guitar, piano, keyboards); brothers Jonny Greenwood (lead guitar, keyboards, other instruments) and Colin Greenwood (bass) ...

's guitarist

Jonny Greenwood Jonathan Richard Guy Greenwood (born 5 November 1971) is an English musician and composer. He is the lead guitarist and keyboardist of the alternative rock band Radiohead, and has written numerous film scores. Along with his elder brother, th ...

, who has expressed an enthusiasm for Finnis' work. An album of Finnis' music, ''The Air, Turning'', was also released in February 2019 on

NMC Recordings NMC Recordings is a British recording label and a charity which specialises in recording works by living composers from the British Isles. History The composer Colin Matthews founded NMC in 1989, with financial assistance from the Holst Found ...

. Several works by Finnis form the soundtrack to the Icelandic film, ''Hvítur, Hvítur Dagur'' (" A White, White Day") which premiered at the 2019

Cannes Film Festival The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...

. Finnis has also contributed string arrangements to albums ''Goddess'' (2014) ''

The Altar ''The Altar'' is the second studio album by American singer and songwriter Banks, released on September 30, 2016, by Harvest Records. Banks collaborated with several producers on the album, including Tim Anderson, Sohn, and Al Shux, with whom ...

'' (2016) by the singer-songwriter

Banks A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets. Because ...

References

External links

Official Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Finnis, Edmund 1984 births 21st-century British composers People educated at New College School Alumni of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama Living people