Critical Perspectives on Michael Finnissy: Bright Futures, Dark Pasts

About

Ian Pace (b. 1968) is internationally renowned as the leading pianistic interpreter of Finnissys work as well as a major scholar who has written extensively on compositional aesthetic and performative aspects of Finnissys music including major sketch study. He gave a six-concert series of Finnissys complete piano music in 1996 for the composers fiftieth birthday and followed this twenty years later with an eleven-concert series of the now vastly expanded output including a complete performance of Finnissys epic five-and-a-half-hour cycle The History of Photography in Sound which he premiered in London in 2001 recorded for Divine Art and about which he published a monograph. More widely Pace is well-known as a staunch advocate of new music who has given over 300 world premieres played in over 25 countries and recorded over 30 CDs. He is also a musicologist and is Senior Lecturer and Head of Performance at City University of London having previously worked at Southampton University and Dartington College of Arts. His PhD was on new music and its infrastructure in West Germany from the Weimar Republic to the early Allied Occupation. Other areas of expertise include nineteenth-century performance practice contemporary performance and practice-as-research critical musicology avant-garde aesthetics and music under fascism and communism.Nigel McBride (b. 1990) is a composer and researcher. He was educated at The Queens University Belfast and St. Annes and Magdalen Colleges Oxford. His research primarily focuses on philosophical approaches to compositional and musicological issues. While at Oxford he taught composition and musicology extensively as well as developed and convened the seminar series The Composers Forum at Magdalen College. As a composer he has collaborated with many leading performers of new music including Ian Pace Christopher Redgate Gleb Kanasevich Jack Adler-Mckean The Cavaleri String Quartet Jonathan Powell and others. His music has been performed in Germany across the UK the USA and others.