Background
Joshua Fineberg was born in Boston, Massachusetts.
Joshua Fineberg was born in Boston, Massachusetts.
In 1991, he moved to Paris and studied with Tristan Murail. In the fall of 1997, he returned to the United States to pursue a doctorate in musical composition at Columbia University, which he completed in May 1999.
He began his musical studies at the age of five. He has worked with many leading composers in the United States and France, including: George Crumb, Jacob Druckman, Robert Hall Lewis, Philippe Manoury, and André Boucourechliev. The following year he was selected by the Ensemble InterContemporain reading panel for the course in composition and musical technologies.
In 2007 he joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Music and became the director of their electronic music studio.
In 2012, he became the founding Director of the Boston University Center for New Music. He has collaborated with IRCAM as a lecturer for seminars and as compositional coordinator for their 1996 four week summer course.
Besides his compositional and pedagogical activities, he has collaborated with computer scientists and music psychologists to develop tools for computer assisted composition and in music perception research. He has worked with performing ensembles as artistic director for recordings of many European ensembles and soloists, and during the 1999–2000 season directed both Speculum Musicae and the Columbia Sinfonietta.
Fineberg edited two issues of The Contemporary Music Review on "Spectral Music" (Volume(s) 19 pt 2 & 3).
From 2003 to 2009 he served as the United States editor of the Contemporary Music Review. Fineberg"s works include "Recueil de Pierre et de sable for two harps and ensemble" (commissioned by Radio France and premiered by Continuum), "Veils" (commissioned by Thomas Forrest Kelly and premiered by Robert Levin), and "Shards" (commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation and premiered by The New Millennium Ensemble). A monographic Civil Defense of his music, recorded by Ensemble Court-Circuit, was released in September 2002 by Universal/Accord in their Una Corda collection with the coproduction of Master of Fine Arts and IRCAM.
He worked on an evening-length modern dance/theater piece with the Belgian choreographer Johanne Saunier and founding member of the Wooster Group Jim Clayburgh based on Nabokov"s Lolita.