Michael Finnissy was born in Brixton (south London) in 1946. He started composing aged 4, and was self taught until he gained a Foundation Scholarship to the Royal College of Music in 1965, where his principal mentor was Bernard Stevens. Whilst there he secretly planned that his future work would assemble a ‘cabinet of curiosities’ - an individualised account of world music, representing (with affection and irony) all periods and genres. His ideology and aesthetics have been influenced by Underground and avant-garde cinema: Markopoulos, Brakhage, Jack Smith, Warhol, Pasolini, Jarman and Godard; the painters Hokusai, Cézanne, Degas, David Hockney and Robert Rauschenberg; and composers Erik Satie and Charles Ives. He served as president of the ISCM/IGNM from 1990 until 1966. His work has also focussed on theatre (vocal and dance) and on non-professional music-making, with CoMA (Contemporary Music for All) and church choirs. He is an Emeritus Professor of Composition at the University of Southampton (UK).
