Finn was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He is Jewish,[1] raised in conservative Judaism,[2] and grew up in Natick, Massachusetts, with his parents and siblings, Michael and Nancy. He attended the Temple Israel in Natick, where his rabbi was Harold Kushner. In Hebrew School, Finn wrote his first play, saying, "I don't think I ever told anyone this: The first play I ever wrote was in Hebrew. I have no idea what it was about. But it was horrible, I guarantee it. I couldn't write plays, and I couldn't really speak Hebrew, so how good could it be?"[2] While attending Natick High School, Finn competed with the Natick Speech Team and was in the drama department headed by Gerald Dyer.[3] For his bar mitzvah, he received a guitar and taught himself to play.[4]
He went on to attend Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, as a music major. He originally entered as a guitar major, "When I got to college I kind of transferred to the piano. I transferred what I knew on the guitar to the piano. But when I was playing the guitar I was always writing my own songs — and singing a few of — I only had one book of folk songs, a blue book, of these sad, sad folk songs. ...I would start them the way they were written and then I would change them to how I wanted them.... I would just use the lyrics — re-musicalize the lyrics."[4] When he graduated, he received the Hutchinson Fellowship (a musical composition award).[5]
Career
Finn is a heavily autobiographical writer; he always writes his own lyrics. His topics have included the gay and Jewish experiences in contemporary America, and also family, belonging, sickness, healing, and loss. According to a 2006 article, "The Washington Post called him 'the composer laureate of loss.'"[6]
With Lapine, Finn penned a musical loosely based on his near-death experience following brain surgery, exploring the role of music in his life and recovery. The musical's main character is a man who has what may be a terminal arteriovenous malformation (AVM). Finn's longtime partner, Arthur Salvadore, is represented by the character Roger Delli-Bovi. Finn's mother is also present in the piece.[6] That musical, A New Brain, starred Malcolm Gets, Kristin Chenoweth and Chip Zien, and premiered Off-Broadway at the Lincoln Center Theater in 1998.[8] The musical won the 1999 Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical. The UK premiere was at the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
At the 2006 Elliot Norton Awards Ceremony, Finn brought his high school drama teacher, Gerry Dyer, onstage with him to present an award. Finn said of Dyer that he "imbued us with a ridiculous sense of our own self-worth."[9] Another student of Gerald Dyer, Alison Fraser, found fame on Broadway, collaborating with Finn in the original casts of In Trousers and March of the Falsettos.
Finn had another Broadway success with The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, for which he wrote both music and lyrics. The show won two Tony Awards in 2005-one for Best Book of a Musical, and another for the Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical. It ran Off-Broadway, then on Broadway in 2005[10] and toured the United States in 2006. The show was first workshopped and produced at Barrington Stage Company (BSC) in Pittsfield, MA, where Finn later created The Musical Theatre Lab (MTL) with BSC Artistic Director Julianne Boyd. The MTL is an annual summer lab where emerging musical theatre artists are supported and new musical works are created, fine-tuned and produced under the curatorship of Finn and Boyd.[11]
Three musical revues or song suites of Finn's music have been produced:
Infinite Joy, in which the composer played the piano and sang along with an all-star cast, contained several songs from shows that were unfinished, and some that were cut from previous shows.
Make Me a Song, conceived and directed by Rob Ruggiero, premiered at Hartford's Theaterworks in the summer of 2006, opened Off-Broadway in November 2007, and closed in December 2007 after 54 performances.[13] A live recording was released by Sh-K-Boom Records on April 29, 2008.[14]
Finn's first show was called Sizzle and was produced at Williams College in the fall of 1971. Finn wrote the music and lyrics, and his good friend, Charlie Rubin, wrote the libretto. Sizzle was the first original musical produced on the Williams College campus since Stephen Sondheim attended the college over 20 years earlier. Sizzle was a coming of age musical about college students but concluded in an unusual way with the star of the show, played by J. Tyler Griffin, Jr., dying in an electric chair. Sizzle played to packed houses. Rubin possesses a reel-to-reel tape containing excerpts from the show, including most of the music.
His long-in-development show, The Royal Family of Broadway, with a book by Richard Greenberg, was based on the play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, which tells the story of a girl from a family of great Broadway actors who contemplates leaving show business and getting married. It has apparently been shelved, according to William Finn's personal notes for Make Me a Song, Playbill magazine and an article from 2006.[6][15]
Finn's songs were featured exclusively on Lisa Howard's album Songs of Innocence and Experience, released on April 12, 2011.[16]
The musical comedy Little Miss Sunshine, premiered at the La Jolla Playhouse, California, from February 15, 2011, through March 27, 2011. James Lapine wrote the book and is the director, set design by David Korins, staging by Lapine and Christopher Gattelli. The opening night cast featured Hunter Foster (Richard), Malcolm Gets (Frank), Dick Latessa (Grandpa), Taylor Trensch (Dwayne), Georgi James (Olive), and Jennifer Laura Thompson (Sheryl).[17][18] The ensemble, who Jay Irwin wrote "...took the small parts they were given and ran with them, almost right out of the theater as each of them brilliantly played the comedic relief to the family's "straight man"", starred Bradley Dean, Carmen Ruby Floyd, Eliseo Roman, Andrew Samonsky, Sally Wilfert, and Zakiya Young.
His long-shelved musical, The Royal Family of Broadway, saw its first full production in 2018 at the Barrington Stage Company with Putnam librettist Rachel Sheinkin penning the book.[22]
Personal life
In 1992, Finn suffered deteriorating vision, dizziness and partial paralysis and was rushed to the hospital. He had arteriovenous malformation, or AVM, in his brain stem. In September 1992, he had Gamma Knife surgery, which obliterated the AVM. After the surgery, Finn experienced a year of humbled serenity and constantly felt like he had a "new brain." Finn's 1998 musical A New Brain is based on his experience with AVM and his subsequent successful surgery.[6]
He is gay, and lives with his life partner, Arthur Salvadore, in New York City[23] and Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he is a composer and writer.
