Finlay Panter

Appears on:

• TOIY
  S/t

Finlay Panter is a Liverpool-born drummer, percussionist, and composer, active across the European jazz and improvisational music scenes. A graduate of the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM), he is a founding member of the Beats and Pieces Big Band, with whom he won the 2010 European Young Artists’ Jazz Award at the Burghausen International Jazz Festival.

Based in Berlin for over a decade, Panter has performed at leading venues and festivals including Bimhuis, Porgy & Bess, Jazzahead!, Oslo Jazzfestival, North Sea Jazz Festival, and transatlantic jazz festivals in Toronto, Rochester, and Montreal. He has also studied with influential drummers John Hollenbeck and Jim Black, shaping his distinctive and dynamic playing style.

In addition to his jazz work, Panter is the principal percussionist of the Berlin Academy of American Music (BAAM) and performs regularly with the Composers Orchestra Berlin (COB).

Passionate about improvisation, he explores spontaneous composition and creative interplay through projects such as Toiy, a Berlin-based trio dedicated to improvised music. Alongside TOIY, he performs in With Motion, an ensemble that reimagines and freely interprets the music of Paul Motian.

Panter was nominated for the British Composers Award in the jazz category in 2018, and continues to develop projects that blur the boundaries between composition and improvisation.