1. William Alan Finn was an American composer and lyricist.
21 Facts About William Finn
1. 2.
William Finn was best known for his musicals, which include Falsettos, for which he won the 1992 Tony Awards for Best Original Score and Best Book of a Musical, A New Brain, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.
3.
William Finn was Jewish, raised in conservative Judaism, and grew up in Natick, Massachusetts, with his parents and siblings, Michael and Nancy.
4.
William Finn attended the Temple Israel in Natick, where his rabbi was Harold Kushner.
5.
William Finn went on to attend Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, as a music major.
6.
William Finn was a heavily autobiographical writer; he always wrote his own lyrics.
7.
William Finn's topics included the gay and Jewish experiences in contemporary America, and family, belonging, sickness, healing, and loss.
8.
William Finn was especially noted for his work on what was to become a trilogy of short musicals Off-Broadway.
9.
At the 2006 Elliot Norton Awards Ceremony, William Finn brought his high school drama teacher, Gerry Dyer, onstage with him to present an award.
10.
William Finn had another Broadway success with The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, for which he wrote both music and lyrics.
11.
Three musical revues or song suites of William Finn's music have been produced:.
12.
William Finn wrote the music and lyrics, and his good friend, Charlie Rubin, wrote the libretto.
13.
William Finn's songs were featured exclusively on Lisa Howard's album Songs of Innocence and Experience, released on April 12,2011.
14.
William Finn was one of a selected few composers who contributed to the song cycle Stars of David which premiered in October 2012 at the Philadelphia Theatre Company.
15.
William Finn's long-in-development show, The Royal Family of Broadway, with a book by Richard Greenberg, is 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.
16.
William Finn was gay, and lived with his life partner, Arthur Salvadore, in New York City and Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
17.
William Finn was a member of the NYU Tisch Graduate Program in Musical Theater Writing faculty.
18.
William Finn was the co-founder and artistic producer of the Musical Theatre Lab at the Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, established in 2006.
19.
In 1992, William Finn suffered deteriorating vision, dizziness and partial paralysis and was rushed to the hospital.
20.
William Finn had arteriovenous malformation, or AVM, in his brain stem.
21.
William Finn died from pulmonary fibrosis at a hospital in Bennington, Vermont, on April 7,2025, at the age of 73.