Finn Savery embraces various musical styles, blending tonal tradition, European modernism, folk, pop, jazz, and rock. Savery values musical substance over strict adherence to styles, often combining different forms of music to create a cohesive and personal language.
"For me it's crucial that the works succeed as works, and in reality I don't care what styles people think appear in them. For me it's almost like composing in different keys - it all belongs together, it's all that you relate to, that you feel for; it forms part of your language, it belongs there," he once stated in an interview in Dansk Musik Tidsskrift.
His compositions range from simple melodies to complex constructions, exploring tonality, pentatonic scales, modes, chromatic atonality, classical time signatures, polyrhythms, swinging jazz rhythms, and free-flowing progressions.
Inspired by his father's musical background and exposure to the vibrant music scene around the Frederiksberg Folk Music High School, Savery's passion for composition was further fueled by exposure to the music of influential musicians like Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, and Miles Davis. From 1953 to 1960 he studied at the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen, trained as a pianist and took lessons in instrumentation and composition. Additionally, his encounter with Pierre Boulez and serialism during the music course in Darmstadt in 1960 significantly impacted his development as a composer.
Finn Savery's 90 years birthday is celebrated with a portrait concert arranged by Ny Musik i Birkerød on 26 November. Find more information about the concert here.
Find more information and a selection of works by Finn Savery here.