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Historical Piano Concerts Series
About the Musicians

Robert Finley

Robert Finley was born in Hull, England, and began to play the piano at the age of seven. At the age of ten he won a scholarship to study piano and musicianship at Trinity College of Music in London. He was awarded the ARCM diploma with honors from the Royal College of Music in 1976. He studied electronic engineering at the University of Sussex and received a Bachelor of Science degree. While studying engineering, he continued his musical education with various concert pianists including Norma Fisher and Albert Ferber, a protégé of Rachmaninoff, and in the masterclasses of Vlado Perlemuter and Louis Kentner.

He emigrated to the United States in 1980. He has given many recitals in the UK, USA, France, Germany, Israel and Argentina, performed concertos with symphony orchestras in the UK, and played on radio and television in the USA. In Boston, he studied with Michael Lewin, Gabriel Chodos and in the masterclasses of Jorge Bolet in Edinburgh Scotland and Washington DC. He has won prizes in international piano competitions including 2nd place in the WIPAC Competition in Washington DC in 2004. In 2008 he won a piano concerto competition during the Piano Texas Festival and was a soloist with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra in the first movement of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 1.

He is an expert in electronic music and MIDI, and recorded three albums for the QRS Pianomation player piano system. In 2001 he founded the Boston Piano Amateurs Association, a non-profit organization that organizes a biennial international piano competition for outstanding amateur pianists. He retired as an engineer several years ago and now gives concerts and teaches piano privately at his home in Northborough.