ABOUT
MARY FINSTERER is recognised as one of Australia’s finest composers. Having received international recognition through awards for her music in Europe, Britain, USA and Canada, she has also represented Australia in five International Society for Contemporary Music festivals.
Mary has been the recipient of many prestigious acknowledgements including the Churchill Fellowship, Australia Council Composer Fellowship, Royal Netherlands Government Award, Sydney Symphony Orchestra composer-in-residence, Paul Lowin Orchestral Prize and numerous Apra Amcos ART Music Awards throughout her career. She has been the featured composer in the ABC Classic FM Pedestal Programme and the Sydney Opera House. The first collection of her award–winning work spanning more than 10 years can be heard on the double–disc compilation entitled CATCH, on the ABC Classics|Universal label.
Also composing music for feature film, in 2011 Mary’s score for Shirley Barrett’s feature South Solitary was a finalist in the Film Critics Circle Awards and has been released on ABC Classics|Universal.
Mary's most recent work, her new opera Biographica, was premiered by Sydney Chamber Opera and Ensemble Offspring at the Sydney Festival in January 2017 with exceptional success. Having enjoyed a sold-out season, it was enthusiastically received by critics and audiences alike and described as 'an outstanding new opera that deserves a permanent place in the repertory’.
Mary was the composer-in-residence at the Canberra International Music Festival in 2018 and received the APRA|AMCOS Art Music Award for Vocal Work of the year.
“The music I compose is an amalgam of styles that brings together medieval and renaissance musical practice with 20th and 21st century innovations including electronics, orchestration and serial techniques. By infusing the material with historical, metaphorical and poetic references through word–painting and harmonic treatment, my aim is to create a language that speaks to the universality inherent in the power of music.” MF