American soprano Christie Finn is actively involved in the world of contemporary vocal performance and new music theater. Finn has performed as a soloist with the Asko | Schönberg Ensemble (Netherlands), ensemble variances (France), the Hezarfen Ensemble (Istanbul, Turkey), ictus (Belgium), Nadar (Belgium), Oerknal! (Netherlands), oh ton-ensemble (Germany), VocaalLAB (Netherlands), and Voces Suaves (Switzerland), as well as several ensembles in New York City, including ekmeles, the S.E.M. Ensemble, Experiments in Opera, and Tactus. She is a co-founder and member of the experimental music duo NOISE-BRIDGE, collaborating with clarinetist Felix Behringer, and Co-Artistic Director of ExVoCo. She is also a permanent member of CrossingLines (Spain) and Forum Neue Vokal Musik (Germany).
International festivals and concert series include the Bregenzer Festspiele (Austria), the Beijing Modern Music Festival, ensems (Valencia, Spain), klarafestival (Brussels, Belgium), Hamburg International Music Festival, (Germany), Festival Mixtur (Barcelona, Spain), MUSICON (Durham, U.K.), and Resonant Bodies (New York City, U.S.A.) In the Stuttgart area, festivals include Musik am 13., Südseite Nachts, Klangraum, Sommer in Stuttgart, Konzertreihe für aktuelle Musik, tonArt (Esslingen a. N.), musica nova (Reutlingen), Zeitgenuss (Karlsruhe), and Opernfestspiele Heidenheim. Finn is a two-time winner of an interpretation prize at the International Stockhausen Concerts and Courses (Kürten, Germany) and was awarded a prize in the Karlsruher Wettbewerb für die Interpretation zeitgenössischer Musik 2014.
Finn is active in the 2023-2024 season with both scholarly and artistic projects. She will begin the season with a presentation at the TaPRA (Theatre and Performance Research Association) in Leeds, England on the music of American composer Dorothy Rudd Moore. She joins ensemble chromosom for a concert tour of Austria in the fall and will perform with CrossingLines in Madrid in December. Finn continues to serve on the faculty of the Singing Down the Barriers Institute, which seeks to promote the performance of concert song by Black composers by performers of all races and ethnicity, and is a member of the jury for the International Division of the George Shirley Vocal Competition.
The 2022-2023 season included a performance with CrossingLines ensemble as part of the Ensems Festival (Valencia, Spain); a staged production of Pierrot Lunaire in San Antonio, Texas; and performances with ExVoCo at the Klangraum Festival (Stuttgart, Germany) and with ensemble TaG (Winterthur, Switzerland).
Highlights of the 2021-2022 season included the Gaudeamus Festival (Utrecht, Netherlands), performing a work by Matthew Ricketts as soloist with the New European Ensemble; a new production of Thierry Pécou’s Nahasdzáán: A Navajo Oratorio with ensemble variances (Grenoble, France); a collaboration and tour with her ensemble ExVoCo and Duo Klexs (Switzerland); a Sciarrino Portrait concert at the Wiener Konzerthaus (Vienna, Austria) with CrossingLines; and Klaus Dreher’s Die Graue Passion in the Deutschen Katholikentagen (Stuttgart).
Activities during the COVID-19 pandemic included the release of the album Waterlines (August 2020) from ictus ensemble; Finn is the soloist of Christopher Trapani’s work by the same title. Online festivals included Klangspektrum BW (Fall 2020) and Klangraum Festival 2020 (November 2020).
Highlights from the 2019-2020 season included the premiere of a new multimedia work by Anthony R. Green, as well as premieres of works by Nicholas DeMaison and Martin Iddon; all of these works were composed and premiered for her duo NOISE-BRIDGE. Other highlights included soprano soloist in Mozart’s Requiem (Böblingen) and a portrait concert of works by Sciarrino (Barcelona, with CrossingLines). All concerts scheduled for March 2020 or later were canceled and moved to future seasons due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 2018-2019 season included the German premiere of Beat Furrer’s a sei voci with Voces Suaves (Basel) as part of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden’s Barocktage 2018 (Pierre Boulez Saal, Berlin); directing and performing with her ensemble ExVoCo in the Klangraum Festival (Stuttgart); and creating the role “Spider Woman” in the world premiere of Thierry Pécou’s staged Nahasdzáán: A Navajo Oratorio (Rouen, France). Finn also taught and performed as a guest lecturer at the Interpretation and Performance Practice Days in Saarbrücken (Germany), as well as work with students at the University of Bristol.
The 2017-2018 season included vocal works by Stuart Saunders Smith in Tampa (Florida, U.S.A.), performances of works by Beat Furrer and Bernhard Lang with CrossingLines Ensemble (Spain), Aperghis’s Récitations in Salzburg (Austria) & Saarbrücken (Germany), Stockhausen’s Stimmung at the Hamburg International Music Festival, collaboration with the Ghent (Belgium) theater company Ontroerend Goed on Loopstation, and a large, multi-ensemble project celebrating Guillaume Apollinaire, organized and directed by Finn (in which she also performed). Finn and her NOISE-BRIDGE duo partner Felix Behringer premiered works written for them by composers Nicholas DeMaison, Joseph Michaels, and Matthew Ricketts, among others.
In August 2017, Finn created the lead role of Mrs. Ramsay in the world premiere of Zesses Seglias’s opera To the Lighthouse at the Bregenz Festival (Austria). Finn was heard as the Voice of Christ in the world premiere of Klaus Dreher’s Die Graue Passion (Musik am 13. concert series in Stuttgart, Germany), and again joined Ictus to perform Christopher Trapani’s Waterlines (Antwerp, Belgium) as well as Forum Neue Vokalmusik for Stockhausen’s Stimmung (MUSICON concert series in Durham, U.K.). Finn performed in the world premiere of Luis Codera Puzo’s Empor in Barcelona, with a reprise of the work at Sommer in Stuttgart. She was also heard in Aperghis’s Sextuor and in solo works at the Opernfestspiele Heidenheim 2017 (Germany).
Highlights of the 2015-6 season include performances with Ensemble arspoetica (Augsburg, Germany) and Duo Enssle-Lamprecht (Salzburg, Austria), a tour in Italy with NOISE-BRIDGE, Helmut Lachenmann’s Got Lost in the Klangraum Festival (Stuttgart), Aperghis’ music theater piece Sextuor in the tonArt Festival (Esslingen, Germany), and an encore performance of Christopher Trapani’s Waterlines with Ictus in Ghent (Belgium). In the 2015-16, season, Finn performed world premieres of over two dozen new compositions, including works by Hannes Dufek, Michael Maierhof, Francesco Maggio, Frederik Neyrinck, and many others.
Performance highlights from 2014-15 included the world premiere of the Mojiao Wang’s opera Encounter at the Beijing Modern Music Festival, Christopher Trapani’s Waterlines with Ictus at the Opera Lille (France), recording Ligeti’s Aventures & Nouvelles Aventures for the Saarländischer Rundfunk (Germany), Helmut Lachenmann’s Got Lost for the opening concert of the Resonant Bodies Festival (New York City), a recital at the Residenzschloss in Ludwigsburg (Germany), a concert of works by composer Martin Schüttler with Nadar (Stuttgart, Germany), and performing Stockhausen’s Stimmung as part of 18 Stunden zur Anfechtung der Sommersonnenwende (18 Hours to Challenge the Midsummer Sun, http://18stunden.de), a festival in Stuttgart (Germany) co-organized by Finn and Dr. N. Andrew Walsh.
Career highlights from past seasons include a staged production of Ligeti’s Aventures and Nouvelles Aventures in conjunction with Samuel Beckett’s Spiel (tour in Germany), the world premiere of Klaus Lang’s opera die fette seele (Germany), the complete Récitations of Georges Aperghis as part of the first annual Resonant Bodies Festival, Sofia Gubaidulina’s Homage à T. S. Eliot at the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ (Amsterdam) with the Asko | Schönberg Ensemble, Luciano Berio’s sequenza iii at the Landesmuseum Niederösterreich (Austria), the U.S. premiere of Luigi Nono’s Quando Stanno Morendo (Soprano II) with ekmeles, and several experimental music theater productions with the Studio für Stimmkunst und Neues Musiktheater in Stuttgart (Germany). Music theater productions outside of Stuttgart include Jason Cady’s comic book/sitcom opera Happiness is the Problem with Experiments in Opera in Brooklyn, Georges Aperghis’ Sextuor: L’origine des Espèces (New York premiere), and VocaalLAB‘s 2011 production of the hip-hop breakdance opera MonteverdISH (cover).
Recordings include Ligeti’s Aventures & Nouvelles Aventures (Saarländischer Rundfunk) and the album The Year Begins To Be Ripe (Sonic Arts Editions) in works of John Cage and Stuart Saunders Smith. She has performed Lieder recitals in Austria, operatic works in Italy, and contemporary works by southwestern American composers with the Voices of Change Ensemble of Dallas, Texas. Opera roles include Chabris (Scarlatti’s Giuditta), Mrs. Jenks (The Tender Land) and Belinda (Dido and Aeneas). Of her performance of Betsy Jolas’ Quartet No. 2 with the Tactus Ensemble, the New York Times praised her “lovely account of this complicated score” and how she “surrendered to the music’s florid impulses.”
In addition to her career as a professional singer, Finn is also an active poet. Composer Matt Aelmore set her poetry in the five-movement Pierrot Opera, and she collaborated with Chicago-based composer Christopher Fisher-Lochhead on his piece Tandem, written for NOISE-BRIDGE.
Finn also serves at the Managing Director of the Hampsong Foundation (http://hampsongfoundation.org). Past work with the Hampsong Foundation include the radio series Song: Mirror of the World and the Song of America radio series, both syndicated through WFMT Chicago, among other projects.
A native of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, she is a graduate of Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Stuttgart. Finn is also a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music’s Contemporary Performance Program, where she studied with Lucy Shelton. Finn holds a Master of Music in Voice from Southern Methodist University (Dallas, Texas), where she studied with Joan Heller, and a Bachelor of Arts in Music with a minor in Modern Languages & Linguistics from UMBC (University of Maryland Baltimore County). She sits on the General Board and the Music Advisory Board for Kunstraum34 (http://kunstraum34.de) in Stuttgart, Germany and is a founding member of the Stuttgarter Kollektiv für aktuelle Musik (http://skam.io). Christie currently resides with her husband and two sons in southwest Germany.
(Last updated: November 2022)