Jon Finson grew up in the northern suburbs of Chicago and attended New Trier High School. He took his undergraduate degree at CU, Boulder, finishing with a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. After a year abroad in Vienna and Berlin supported by The Martha Baird Rockefeller Foundation, he took a position at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he taught the history of music and American Studies for 35 years. He now writes fiction, in addition to the occasional article for various journals.Finson has authored five books, including A Time of Confidences: Novel of Summer (CreateSpace, 2014), Robert Schumann: The Book of Songs (Harvard University Press, 2007), and The Voices That Are Gone (Oxford University Press, 1994). In 2013 the Robert-Schumann-Gesellschaft (Zwickau) bestowed its highest honor on him for outstanding scholarship and editorial work in the promotion of the composer's symphonies and songs. Finson's award-winning edition of Schumann's D-minor Symphony (1841 version; Breitkopf & Härtel, 2003) is available online in the Digital Concert Hall of the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Simon Rattle.