Joshua FINEBERG began his apprenticeship at the age of five. In addition to composition, he studied violin, guitar, piano, harpsichord and conducting. He completed his undergraduate studies at the Peabody Conservatory with Morris Cotel where he won first prize in the biannual Virginia Carty de Lillo Composition Competition. He has worked with many leading composers in the United States and France, including: Jacob Druckman, Fred Lerdahl, Robert Hall Lewis, Philippe Manoury, and André Boucourechliev. In 1991, he moved to Paris and studied with Tristan Murail. The following year, he was selected by the IRCAM/Ensemble InterContemporain reading panel for the course in composition and musical technologies. In the Fall of 1997, he returned to the US to pursue a doctorate in musical composition at Columbia University, which he completed in May 1999. After teaching at Columbia for a year, he went to Harvard University where he is currently an Assistant Professor of Music.
He has won various prizes, fellowships and scholarships including: ASCAP Foundation Grants to Young Composers Competition, Ars Electronica special jury mention, Rapport Prize in Composition from Columbia University, Arnold Salop Composition Competition, the Palache Scholarship, a scholarship to study at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, yearly ASCAP Awards from 1991 until he left ASCAP to join the French society SACEM in 1994, and the Randolph S. Rothschild Award in Composition.
In 1992, his work for large orchestra Origins was selected by the international jury of the Gaudeamus foundation as a finalist for the Gaudeamus Prize and was premiered by the Radio Symfonie Orkest of the N.O.S. during the 1992 Gaudeamus Music Week.
He has collaborated with IRCAM as a lecturer for seminars and as compositional coordinator for their 1996 four weeks summer course. Besides his compositional and pedagogical activities, he has actively collaborated with computer scientists and music psychologists to help develop tools for computer assisted composition and in music perception research. Finally, he has been deeply involved in working with performing ensembles as Artistic Director for recordings of many European ensembles and soloists, and during the 1999-2000 season as a director of Speculum Musicae and the Columbia Sinfonietta.
Joshua Fineberg was also the issue editor for two recently published issues of The Contemporary Music Review on "Spectral Music" (Vol. 19 pt. 2 & 3). A monographic CD of his music recorded by Ensemble Court-Circuit has been published in September 2002 by Accord/Una Corda and MFA. His works have been performed, commissioned and recorded by leading ensembles and soloists in Europe, Asia and the United States.
His music is published by Durand / Universal Classical Music.