Jon W. Finson

Jon Finson grew up in the northern suburbs of Chicago and attended New Trier High School. He received a baccalaureate degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder, an M.A from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. After a year abroad in Vienna and Berlin supported by The Martha Baird Rockefeller Foundation, he accepted a position at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he taught the history of music and American Studies for 35 years.

Finson has authored seven books, including Death on the Drive (CreateSapce, 2018), A Chosen Landscape: Adventures in the Gay Academy (CreateSpace 2016), A Time of Confidences: Novel of Summer (CreateSpace, 2014, rev. 2018), Robert Schumann: The Book of Songs (Harvard University Press, 2007), and The Voices That Are Gone (Oxford University Press, 1994).

Finson holds the 2013 Robert Schumann Prize for outstanding scholarship and editorial work in the promotion of the composer's symphonies and songs. Finson's award-winning edition of Schumann's D-minor Symphony (first version; Breitkopf & Härtel, 2003) is available online in the Digital Concert Hall of the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Simon Rattle, and on CD performed by the North German Radio Orchestra (Hamburg) conducted by Thomas Hengelbrock and by the West German Radio Orchestra (Düsseldorf) conducted by Heinz Holliger.