Brian Ferneyhough

Brian Ferneyhough is an English composer and teacher, born in Coventry in 1943 and based in California since 1987. He is usually regarded as the central figure of the New Complexity, writing meticulously notated, highly demanding scores meant to engage performers physically as well as expressively. Ferneyhough studied at the Birmingham School of Music and the Royal Academy of Music, then with Ton de Leeuw in Amsterdam and Klaus Huber in Basel. He taught in Freiburg from 1973 to 1986, at UC San Diego from 1987 to 1999 and later at Stanford, and has lectured at the Darmstadt summer courses.