Joshua Fineberg (born July 26, 1969) is an American
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
contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music is classical music composed close to the present day. At the beginning of the 21st century, it commonly referred to the post-1945 modern forms of post-tonal music after the death of Anton Webern, and included seria ...
.
Biography
Joshua Fineberg was born in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
, Massachusetts. He began his musical studies at the age of five. He completed his undergraduate studies at the
Peabody Conservatory
The Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University is a private conservatory and preparatory school in Baltimore, Maryland. It was founded in 1857 and opened in 1866 by merchant/financier and philanthropist George Peabody (1795–1869) ...
with
Morris Cotel where he won first prize in the bi-annual Virginia Carty de Lillo Composition Competition.
Music career
He has worked with many leading composers in the United States and
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
, including:
George Crumb
George Henry Crumb Jr. (24 October 1929 – 6 February 2022) was an American composer of avant-garde contemporary classical music. Early in his life he rejected the widespread modernist usage of serialism, developing a highly personal musical ...
,
Jacob Druckman
Jacob Raphael Druckman (June 26, 1928 – May 24, 1996) was an American composer born in Philadelphia.
Life
A graduate of the Juilliard School in 1956, Druckman studied with Vincent Persichetti, Peter Mennin, and Bernard Wagenaar. In 1949 and 1 ...
,
Robert Hall Lewis
Robert Hall Lewis (April 22, 1926 – March 22, 1996) was an American composer, conductor, and trumpet player who taught at Goucher College (1958 – 1995) and Peabody Conservatory (1958 – 1995), both in Baltimore, Maryland. His works ...
,
Philippe Manoury
Philippe Manoury (born 19 June 1952) is a French composer.
Biography
Manoury was born in Tulle and began composition studies at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris with Gérard Condé and Max Deutsch. He continued his studies from 1974 to 197 ...
, and
André Boucourechliev
André Boucourechliev (28 July 1925 – 13 November 1997) was a French composer of Bulgarian origin.
Born in Sofia, Boucourechliev studied piano at the Conservatory there. Subsequently, he studied in Paris at the École Normale de Musique de Pari ...
. In 1991, he moved to
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
and studied with
Tristan Murail
Tristan Murail (born 11 March 1947) is a French composer associated with the "spectral" technique of composition. Among his compositions is the large orchestral work ''Gondwana''.
Early life and studies
Murail was born in Le Havre, France. His fa ...
. The following year he was selected by the
Ensemble InterContemporain
The Ensemble intercontemporain (EIC) is a French music ensemble, based in Paris, that is dedicated to contemporary music. Pierre Boulez founded the EIC in 1976 for this purpose, the first permanent organization of its type in the world.
Organi ...
reading panel for the course in composition and musical technologies. In the fall of 1997, he returned to the US to pursue a doctorate in musical composition at
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
, which he completed in May 1999. After teaching at Columbia for a year, he went to
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
where he served as the
John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities until 2007. In 2007 he joined the faculty of the
Boston University School of Music
The Boston University College of Fine Arts (CFA) at Boston University consists of the School of Music, the School of Theatre, and the School of Visual Arts. Each school offers degrees in the performing and visual arts at the undergraduate and grad ...
and became the director of their electronic music studio. In 2012, he became the founding director of the Boston University Center for New Music.
He has collaborated with
IRCAM
IRCAM (French: ''Ircam, '', English: Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music) is a French institute dedicated to the research of music and sound, especially in the fields of avant garde and electro-acoustical art music. It is ...
as a lecturer for seminars and as compositional coordinator for their 1996 four week summer course. Besides his compositional and pedagogical activities, he has collaborated with
computer scientists
Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (including th ...
and
music psychologists
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect o ...
to develop tools for
computer assisted composition
Computer music is the application of computing technology in music composition, to help human composers create new music or to have computers independently create music, such as with algorithmic composition programs. It includes the theory and ap ...
and in
music perception
''Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by University of California Press five times a year. It was founded by Diana Deutsch.
According to the ''Journal Citation Reports'', the journal has ...
research. He has worked with performing ensembles as artistic director for recordings of many European ensembles and soloists, and during the 1999–2000 season directed both
Speculum Musicae
Speculum Musicae is an American chamber ensemble dedicated to the performance of contemporary classical music. It was founded in New York City in 1971 and is particularly noted for its performances of the music of Elliott Carter and Charles Wuo ...
(New York City) and the Columbia Sinfonietta (Boston). Fineberg edited two issues of the ''
Contemporary Music Review
Contemporary history, in English-language historiography, is a subset of modern history that describes the historical period from approximately 1945 to the present. Contemporary history is either a subset of the late modern period, or it i ...
'' on
spectral music
Spectral music uses the acoustic properties of sound – or sound spectra – as a basis for composition.
Definition
Defined in technical language, spectral music is an acoustic musical practice where compositional decisions are often informe ...
" (vol. 19, pt. 2 & 3). From 2003 to 2009 he served as the US editor of the ''Contemporary Music Review''.
Fineberg's works include ''Recueil de Pierre et de sable'' for two harps and ensemble (commissioned by
Radio France
Radio France is the French national public radio broadcaster.
Stations
Radio France offers seven national networks:
*France Inter — Radio France's "generalist" station, featuring entertaining and informative talk mixed with a wide variety of ...
and premiered by Continuum), ''Veils'' (commissioned by
Thomas Forrest Kelly
Thomas Forrest Kelly (born 1943) is an American musicologist, musician, and scholar. He is the Morton B. Knafel Professor of Music at Harvard University. His most recent books include: ''The Role of the Scroll'' (2019), ''Capturing Music: The Story ...
and premiered by
Robert Levin), and ''Shards'' (commissioned by the
Fromm Music Foundation and premiered by the New Millennium Ensemble). He worked on an evening-length modern dance/theater piece with the Belgian choreographer and founding member of the
Wooster Group
The Wooster Group is a New York City-based experimental theater company known for creating numerous original dramatic works. It gradually emerged from Richard Schechner's The Performance Group (1967–1980) during the period from 1975 to 1980, an ...
Jim Clayburgh
Jim Clayburgh (born 23 May 1949) is a scenic designer. He was a founding member of The Wooster Group and served as the group's resident designer from 1975 to 1994. He currently lives in Brussels, Belgium, where he founded the company JOJI INC with ...
based on
Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bo ...
's ''
Lolita
''Lolita'' is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is notable for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, a middle-aged literature professor under the pseudonym Humbert Humber ...
''.
A monographic CD of his music recorded by the Ensemble Court-Circuit was released in 2002 as a part of Universal France's Accord/Una Corda collection, another CD recorded by the Ensemble FA was released by Mode Records in June 2009, and in 2012 a CD with his complete works for piano, performed by Marilyn Nonken, was released by Divine Art/Métier. ''Sonic Fictions'', a new CD of his works was released in 2018, also by Divine Art/Métier. Major projects include an "imaginary opera" based on Vladimir Nabokov's ''Lolita'' for actor, dancers, video, ensemble and electronics realized in collaboration with JOJI; ''Speaking in Tongues'', a concerto written for Les Percussions de Strasbourg's 50th anniversary tour, ''Objets trouvé'' written for the ensemble Court-circuit and ''La Quintina'' for string quartet and electronics written for the
Arditti Quartet
The Arditti Quartet is a string quartet founded in 1974 and led by the British violinist Irvine Arditti. The quartet is a globally recognized promoter of contemporary classical music and has a reputation for having a very wide repertoire. T ...
and premiered at the Ultraschall festival in Berlin that marked the first co-realization between the ExperimentalStudio in Freiburg and IRCAM in Paris. In June 2017, Chicago's Dal Niente Ensemble and Mocrep premiered his ''take my hand...'', an evening-length immersive musical theater that explores ecstatic states.
Awards and critical acclaim
He has won various prizes, fellowships and scholarships including: ASCAP Foundation Grants to Young Composers Competition; Ars Electronica special jury mention; Rapoport Prize in Composition from University; Arnold Salop Composition Competition; the Palache Scholarship, a scholarship to study at
the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau; yearly ASCAP Awards from 1991 until he left ASCAP to join the French society SACEM in 1994; and the Randolph S. Rothschild Award in Composition. In 2011, he was named an artist fellow by the Massachusetts cultural council and in 2016 France named him a Chevalier in arts and letters.
In 1992, his work for large orchestra ''ORIGINS'' was selected by the international jury of the
Gaudeamus Foundation
The Gaudeamus Foundation and Contemporary Music Center organizes and promotes contemporary musical activities and concerts in the Netherlands and abroad. It focuses on supporting the career development of young composers and musicians, particula ...
as a finalist for the
Gaudeamus International Composers Award
The Gaudeamus International Composers Award is made by the Gaudeamus Foundation. The prize is awarded yearly, to a young composer at Dutch music concert, ''Gaudeamus Muziekweek''.
The Gaudeamus Foundation had held an annual music week of Dutch co ...
and was premiered by the
Radio Symfonie Orkest The Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra (NRSO) was a Dutch radio orchestra. It was founded in 1985 after a merger of the Promenade Orchestra and the Radio Orchestra (Omroep Orkest).
The orchestra participated in various operatic productions and ...
of the
N.O.S. during the 1992 Gaudeamus Music Week.
References
Further reading
*
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fineberg, Joshua
20th-century classical composers
21st-century classical composers
American male classical composers
American classical composers
Columbia University School of the Arts alumni
Harvard University faculty
Boston University faculty
1969 births
Living people
Peabody Institute alumni
21st-century American composers
20th-century American composers
20th-century American male musicians
21st-century American male musicians