Edmund Finnis

His music is performed internationally. He has enjoyed particularly close associations with both the London Sinfonietta – who have performed six of his works, including three that they commissioned (Veneer, Unfolds and Seeing is Flux) – and the London Contemporary Orchestra, with whom he is currently Composer-in-Association.

He has received commissions from the London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Spitalfields Festival, Cross Linx Festival (Netherlands), New College Choir Oxford, the Mercury Quartet, and the British Film Institute (to co-compose with Max de Wardener and Elysian Quartet an original score for the 1929 Eisenstein film, The General Line). Other performers of his work include such leading young instrumentalists as Mark Simpson, Aisha Orazbayeva, Oliver Coates, Liam Byrne, Víkingur Ólafsson and the conductors Sian Edwards, Diego Masson, Francois-Xavier Roth, Vasily Petrenko, Baldur Brönnimann, Nicholas Collon and Ken-David Masur. In March 2012 he conducted the premiere of his string septet, Relative Colour, at Carnegie Zankel Hall in New York. His quartet Unfolds (2011) has been performed across Europe, at Tanglewood Festival, and in Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s 2012 MusicNOW series.

Finnis received a Leonard Bernstein Fellowship to study at Tanglewood and his previous teachers have included Julian Anderson and Rozalie Hirs. He has taken part in courses and schemes led or mentored by George Benjamin, Kaija Saariaho, Oliver Knussen, John Harbison, Simon Holt and others. He worked as an amanuensis for the late Jonathan Harvey, and holds a doctorate from the Guildhall School of Music.

Finnis received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists in 2012. He was Composer-in-Residence at the 2013 Chelsea Music Festival in New York City.