Douglas Finch

Douglas Finch was born in Winnipeg and began improvising, composing and performing on the piano from an early age with the help of his mother. He later continued studying with Winnifred Sim, Jean Broadfoot and at the University of Western Ontario with William Aide. After receiving a Masters from Juilliard in New York under Beveridge Webster, Douglas won several awards and was a finalist at the Queen Elisabeth International Piano Competition in Brussels. After moving to London, he co-founded The Continuum Ensemble in 1994 and has collaborated in premiering many new works. He appears regularly with the ensemble at festivals including Spitalfields and at Southbank Centre, featuring composers such as Julian Anderson, Georges Aperghis, Henri Dutilleux, Charles Ives, Claude Vivier, Errollyn Wallen, Iannis Xenakis and many others. He has composed for piano, chamber ensemble, orchestra, theatre and film and his score for the feature film Painted Angels was described in The Independent as “an extraordinary triumph of artistic will”.

Research interests and areas of supervision:

• Transcription and borrowing approaches in musical composition
• Overlapping working methods in improvising and composing
• Contemporary music practice / collaboration / curation
• Composing music for independent art films