Music

Kontakt

Prof. Joshua Fineberg

_Integrative Composition | Instrumental composition
_Faculty: 1

Prof. Joshua Fineberg
Photo: Marco Giugliarelli for Civitella Ranieri

Biography

Joshua Fineberg is a composer and sound artist whose work encompasses contemporary classical music as well as interdisciplinary, immersive, participatory and site-specific forms. His music has been performed internationally and published by Éditions Max Eschig, Gérard Billaudot Éditeur and BabelScores, with recordings released by Universal France’s Accord/Una Corda collection, Mode Records and Métier Records.

Fineberg was Professor of Composition at Boston University, where he founded and directed the Center for New Music for 13 years. Previously, he was John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University and taught at Columbia University. In the 1990s, he worked at IRCAM in Paris both as a composer and as a collaborator on research, developing tools for computer-assisted composition as well as real-time spectral analysis and transformation, while also working with teams studying music perception. His writings on spectral music have served as a major English-language introduction to the movement’s aesthetics and techniques; he has also written more broadly on the aesthetics and perception of contemporary music.

Throughout his career, Fineberg has been deeply involved with ensembles and festivals, seeking to build bridges between contemporary music communities in Europe and the United States. He has also served as artistic director for recordings of contemporary works by Lachenmann, Haas, Murail and others. In 2016, France named him Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Over the past decade, his work has increasingly moved toward immersive, participatory and site-specific experiences. These works create intense, sometimes strange or disorienting environments in which audiences are not simply passive observers but become part of an unfolding experience. Through sound, space and the conditions of perception itself, Fineberg seeks to open unexpected perspectives on how we hear, orient ourselves and experience our surroundings.

In the winter semester of 2026, he was appointed Professor of Instrumental Composition at Folkwang University of the Arts.