Klarinet Archive - Posting 000040.txt from 2006/11

From: "Michael Norsworthy" <m.norsworthy@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Cooperative Commissioning project -- Want to join us?
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 00:18:29 -0500

Dear Clarinetists,

World-Wide Concurrent Premieres to Commission New Work for Clarinet and
Piano by Michael Finnissy for World-Wide Performances by Multiple Performers
December 2007

World-Wide Concurrent Premieres and Commissioning Fund, Inc., with a 15 year
record of commissioning works by some of the world's finest composers, on a
grassroots level, including Pulitzer Prize winners Gunther Schuller, Yehudi
Wyner, Michael Colgrass and John Harbison, is pleased to announce its very
first commission of a work for clarinet and piano, by the eminent British
composer Michael Finnissy.

World-Wide Concurrent Performances will commence on the First Sunday in
December 2007, by (no more than) 50 clarinet piano duos world-wide.
Performers who choose to participate will receive a limited edition composer
individually autographed hand numbered facsimile score, with clarinet part,
and exclusivity with regard to performances world-wide for one year. To
guarantee your own participation in this event please contact WWCPCF, Inc.,
at:

KRADWWCP@-----.com (Kenneth Radnofsky)
OR
m.norsworthy@-----.net (Michael Norsworthy)

World-Wide Concurrent Premieres allows performers world wide, from Seabrook,
Texas to Taipei, Taiwan, from students through established professionals, to
participate in world-premiere premieres at an AFFORDABLE level. By
answering the question of 'Who's first?,' with 'Everybody's first!,' founder
Kenneth Radnofsky, long time member of Boston's conservatories faculties,
has produced a model which has for 15 years fostered the creation of works ,
which allows ALL to premiere the work on a specified day, and for a full
year after. 'It's simple but it works,' said composer John Harbison in a
New York Times feature, as his saxophone sonata was premiered by 43
saxophonists world-wide.

We hope you will join us in this new work by Michael Finnissy. A biography
of the composer follows at the end of this posting.

Sincerely,
Kenneth Radnofsky
Founder, WWCPCF
Faculty, New England Conservatory, Boston Conservatory, Longy School

Michael Norsworthy
Clarinet Faculty Boston Conservatory & Columbia University

MICHAEL FINNISSY - BIOGRAPHY

Michael Finnissy was born in Tulse Hill, London in 1946. He was a Foundation
Scholar at the Royal College of Music, London, where he studied composition
with Bernard Stevens and Humphrey Searle, and piano with Edwin Benbow and
Ian Lake. Afterwards, he studied in Italy with Roman Vlad.

Finnissy created the music department of the London School of Contemporary
Dance, and has been associated as composer with many British dance companies
including London Contemporary Dance Theatre, Ballet Rambert, Strider, and
Second Stride. He has taught at Dartington Summer School, Winchester
College, the junior department of the Royal College of Music, Chelsea
College of Art, and is guest lecturer at many colleges and universities. He
has also been musician in residence to the Victorian College of the Arts,
the City of Caulfield in Australia, and the East London Late Starters
Orchestra, and is an honorary member of New Music Brighton. In 1999 he was
made Professor of Composition at the University of Southampton.

Finnissy has been featured composer at the Bath, Huddersfield, and Almeida
festivals, and his works are widely performed and broadcast worldwide. In
February 1999 a festival at Harvard University, Boston, was devoted to his
music, and several world premieres took place at the 1999 Music Factory
Festival in Bergen, Norway. As a pianist he is particularly associated with
the commissioning and performing of new British work; composers who have
written pieces specially for him include Elizabeth Lutyens, Judith Weir,
James Dillon, Oliver Knussen, Nigel Osborne, Chris Newman, Howard Skempton,
and Andrew Toovey.

In 1990 Finnissy was appointed President of the International Society of
Contemporary Music. He was re-elected in 1993, and in 1998 was made an
honorary member of the ISCM. In 1999 he was been appointed Senior Fellow of
the KBC-chair in New Music at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium
for two years. The appointment included the commission for a work for the
Beethoven Academie, Onbevooroordeeld Leven.

1996, Finnissy's fiftieth birthday year, saw recitals of the complete piano
music by Ian Pace, recordings of orchestral and chamber works on NMC and the
publication by Ashgate of Unknown Ground - a detailed book about Finnissy's
music. A cycle of CDs on the Metier label which includes Folklore, Gershwin
Arrangements, works for string quartet, Seven Sacred Motets, and most
recently Kulamen Dilan has been released to great critical acclaim and
further discs are planned.

Finnissy's epic piano cycle, The History of Photography in Sound, the
product of several years' work and lasting over five hours, received its
complete premiere in January 2001 at the hands of Ian Pace. History's fame
has been increasing ever since with numerous performances, both of the
complete cycle or individual movements, in many countries and by pianists
including Nicolas Hodges, Marilyn Nonken, Mark Knoop, and Philip Howard.

Ensemble Expose gave the world premiere of Greatest Hits of All Time at the
2003 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, while, in 2004, the London
Sinfonietta performed In Stiller Nacht at the Festival Apsects des Musiques
d'Aujourd'hui in Caen, France. In autumn 2004, Marilyn Nonken gave a recital
of Finnissy's piano music (including the American premiere of Folklore II)
at a Composer Portrait concert at the Miller Theatre, New York. A number of
the composer's pieces were featured at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music
Festival 2004, and the world premiere of a song cycle for voice and piano,
setting Whitman poetry, is planned for Huddersfield 2006, Finnissy's
sixtieth birthday year.

In 2005 Michael Finnissy was the recipient of two British Composer Awards,
which are given by the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters.
Molly-House for ensemble won in the 'Making Music' category, a work written
for COMA, for whom Michael is Artistic Director for their 2006 'Open Score'
project.

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