Ross Lee Finney Junior (December 23, 1906–February 4, 1997) was an American composer who taught for many years at the University of Michigan.
[1] In 1935, his setting of poems by Archibald MacLeish won the Connecticut Valley Prize, and in 1937, his First String Quartet received a Pulitzer Scholarship Award.
During World War II, Finney served in the Office of Strategic Services, and received a Purple Heart and a Certificate of Merit.
In his later years Finney composed a series of works exploring the nature and experience of memory, which combined serial organization as well as quotations of folk and popular music: Summer in Valley City (1969) for concert band; Two Acts for Three Players (1970) for clarinet, piano, and percussion; Landscapes Remembered (1971) for chamber orchestra; Spaces (1971) for orchestra; Variations on a Memory (1975) for chamber orchestra; and Skating Down the Sheyenne (1978) for band.
Finney composed the dance scores Heyoka (1981), The Joshua Tree (1984), and Ahab (1986) for Erick Hawkins, and in 1984 completed his first opera, Weep Torn Land, to his own libretto.