Joy Finzi was an artist and founder of the Finzi Trust

Finzi Trust

The Finzi Trust was founded in 1969 and seeks to further the music, ideals and work of Gerald Finzi. It has assisted individuals and organisations in a variety of ways and has initiated many projects reflecting the Trust's policy of encouraging young artists and composers.Recording projects have...

, a foundation named for her deceased husband, composer Gerald Finzi

Gerald Finzi

Gerald Raphael Finzi was a British composer. Finzi is best known as a song-writer, but also wrote in other genres...

.

She was born Joyce Black in Hampstead, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. She studied music and art, and married Finzi in 1933. They had two sons, Christopher

Christopher Finzi

Christopher "Kiffer" Finzi is a British orchestral conductor.He is the son of composer Gerald Finzi. Like his father, the younger Finzi became a pacifist; he refused to do his National Service, and was briefly imprisoned. After his father's death in 1956, he helped his mother, Joy Finzi, to...

 and Nigel.

Together with her husband, Finzi played an important part in founding the Newbury String Players. She devoted much time to preserving the work of composer-poet Ivor Gurney

Ivor Gurney

Ivor Bertie Gurney was an English composer and poet.-Life:Born at 3 Queen Street, Gloucester in 1890, the second of four children of David Gurney, a tailor, and his wife Florence, a seamstress, Gurney showed musical ability early...

, continuing her husband's work after his premature death in 1956. She sketched portrait

Portrait

thumb|250px|right|Portrait of [[Thomas Jefferson]] by [[Rembrandt Peale]], 1805. [[New-York Historical Society]].A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness,...

s of contemporary musicians including Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...

, Sir Adrian Boult

Adrian Boult

Sir Adrian Cedric Boult CH was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was...

, Howard Ferguson

Howard Ferguson

George Howard Ferguson, PC was a Conservative politician and the ninth Premier of Ontario, Canada, from 1923 to 1930.-Background:He was the son of Charles Frederick Ferguson who served in the Canadian House of Commons...

 and Sir Arthur Bliss

Arthur Bliss

‎Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss, CH, KCVO was an English composer and conductor.Bliss's musical training was cut short by the First World War, in which he served with distinction in the army...

, and writers including Edmund Blunden

Edmund Blunden

Edmund Charles Blunden, MC was an English poet, author and critic. Like his friend Siegfried Sassoon, he wrote of his experiences in World War I in both verse and prose. For most of his career, Blunden was also a reviewer for English publications and an academic in Tokyo and later Hong Kong...

, Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin is an American author. She has written novels, poetry, children's books, essays, and short stories, notably in fantasy and science fiction...

, Sylvia Townsend Warner

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Sylvia Nora Townsend Warner was an English novelist and poet.-Life:Sylvia Townsend Warner was born at Harrow on the Hill, the only child of George Townsend Warner and his wife Eleanora Hudleston...

 and David Jones

David Jones (poet)

David Jones CH was both a painter and one of the first generation British modernist poets. As a painter he worked chiefly in watercolor, painting portraits and animal, landscape, legendary and religious subjects. He was also a wood-engraver and designer of inscriptions. As a writer he was...

.

In 1969, she founded the Finzi Trust to finance the recording of her husband Gerald's work and that of other composers, and was instrumental in the formation of Finzi Friends in 1982, a society furthering the work of the Trust. She continued to draw and sculpt, and published two volumes of poetry

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

A Point of Departure and Twelve Months of a Year. A collection of her portrait drawings was published in an edition of 300 by Libanus Press in 1987, with the title In That Place.

External links

• Biography page at MusicWeb International
• The Finzi Trust, visit the official Finzi Trust web site to listen to Gerald Finzi's music and read about his life and the Finzi Trust's work.
• Joy Finzi, read about Joy Finzi's life, her art, music, sculpture and poetry.
• Finzi Friends