©Photo: Kendall Bessent

Carlos Simon

Composer

Home
Reviews
Projects
Features
Discography

“Simon refashions musical history as excitable new realms with an unmistakable musical purpose essential for our times.”
LA Times

Composer in Residence: John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Composer Chair: Boston Symphony Orchestra

“My dad, he always gets on me. He wants me to be a preacher, but I always tell him, ‘Music is my pulpit. That’s where I preach,’” Carlos Simon reflected for The Washington Post. Having grown up in Atlanta, with a long lineage of preachers and connections to gospel music to inspire him, GRAMMY-nominated Simon proves that a well-composed song can indeed be a sermon. His music ranges from concert music for large and small ensembles to film scores with influences of jazz, gospel, and neo-romanticism.

Simon is the current Composer-in-Residence for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and frequently writes for National Symphony Orchestra and Washington National Opera. Simon also holds the position of inaugural Composer Chair of Boston Symphony Orchestra, the first in the institution’s 143-year history.

In the 2024/25 season, Simon will have premiere performances with National Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra for the Last Night of the Proms (in his BBC Proms commissioning debut), Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, Carnegie Hall for National Youth Orchestra of the USA. The season also features the premiere of Simon’s Good News Mass with Gustavo Dudamel and LA Philharmonic, a work reimagining the traditional mass with gospel soloists and choir, with visual creations from Melina Matsoukas (Beyoncé Formation, Queen and Slim).

This follows previous commissions from the likes of San Diego Symphony Orchestra, Washington National Opera (in collaboration with Mo Willems), New York Philharmonic and Bravo! Vail, Minnesota Orchestra, American Ballet Theatre, and Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

As well as his composition work, Simon frequently curates concert programmes, which often highlight his own music as well as that of close collaborators. Curation concerts have recently been programmed by Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Boston Chamber Players, Tanglewood Festival for Contemporary Music, and Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Simon also curated and arranged Coltrane: Legacy for Orchestra, a new project co-commissioned by TO Live (for Toronto Symphony Orchestra) and San Francisco Conservatory of Music, in partnership with the Coltrane Estate.

August 2024 saw the release of Simon’s first full-length orchestral album, Four Symphonic Works, comprised of live concert recordings by National Symphony Orchestra from the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda. Simon also composed the original soundtrack for the PBS documentary Shame of Chicago: Shame of the Nation, which was released as a digital album in April 2024.

In September 2023, Simon released two albums on Decca. Together is a compilation of solo and chamber compositions and arrangements featuring Simon and guests such as J’Nai Bridges, Randall Goosby, Seth Parker Woods and Will Liverman. The work draws on Carlos’ personal experience as an artist to highlight the importance of heritage and identity, and the power of collaborative music-making.

Simon also released the live premiere recording of brea(d)th , a landmark work commissioned by Minnesota Orchestra and written in collaboration with Marc Bamuthi Joseph, conducted by Jonathan Taylor Rush. “Arguably the most important commission of Simon’s career so far” (New York Times), brea(d)th was written following George Floyd’s murder as a direct response to America’s unfulfilled promises and history of systemic oppression against Black Americans.

Simon was nominated for a 2023 GRAMMY Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for his previous album, Requiem for the Enslaved. The requiem is a multi-genre musical tribute to commemorate the stories of the 272 enslaved men, women, and children sold in 1838 by Georgetown University, released by Decca in June 2022. This work sees Simon infuse his original compositions with African American spirituals and familiar Catholic liturgical melodies, performed by Hub New Music Ensemble, Marco Pavé, and MK Zulu.

Acting as music director and keyboardist for GRAMMY Award winner Jennifer Holliday, Simon has performed with Boston Pops, Jackson Symphony, and St. Louis Symphony. He has also toured internationally with soul GRAMMY-nominated artist Angie Stone and performed throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Simon earned his doctorate degree at the University of Michigan, where he studied with Michael Daugherty and Evan Chambers. He has also received degrees from Georgia State University and Morehouse College. He is an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Music Sinfonia Fraternity and a member of the National Association of Negro Musicians, Society of Composers International, and Pi Kappa Lambda Music Honor Society. He has served as a member of the music faculty at Spelman College and Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia and now serves as Associate Professor at Georgetown University. Simon was also a recipient of the 2021 Sphinx Medal of Excellence, the highest honour bestowed by the Sphinx Organization to recognize extraordinary classical Black and Latinx musicians, and was named a Sundance/Time Warner Composer Fellow for his work for film and moving image.

Carlos Simon's brea(d)th | Jonathan Taylor Rush © Minnesota Orchestra

“Ring Shout” from Four Black American Dances | Carlos Simon © Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

Composer Carlos Simon discusses "Wake Up: A Concerto for Orchestra" with the San Diego Symphony © San Diego Symphony

Carlos Simon, Marc Bamuthi Joseph & Minnesota Orchestra present brea(d)th — In honor of George Floyd © Carlos Simon

'Together' Album Trailer © Carlos Simon

Carlos Simon's An Elegy: A Cry from the Grave © Minnesota Orchestra

Boston Symphony Orchestra NOW: Warmth from other Suns - Carlos Simon © Boston Symphony Orchestra

Carlos Simon loop © New York Philharmonic

“Returning to this richly evocative score, I was impressed yet again by the composer’s ability to write music of serious heft that’s still broadly accessible.”

Gramophone, October 2024

“This Concerto for Orchestra is yet another example of Simon’s finely honed dramatic sense, which sustains and builds tension until the unexpectedly neat ending.”

Gramophone, October 2024

“Simon’s dances came off as colorful vignettes from African-American history. ‘Ring Shout’ celebrated an ecstatic religious dance that enslaved people brought to the new world, with a syncopated tambourine propelling the brash, brassy sound that is a Philharmonic specialty [.…] Religious ecstasy returned, American style this time, in ‘Holy Dance,’ a sassy, swirling toccata for orchestra that ended Simon’s suite with a bang.”

New York Classical Review, October 2024

“A work that puts on full display Simon’s often breathtaking combination of cinematic scale and high-resolution detail.”

The Washington Post, September 2024

“There was a typically exuberant new work from Carlos Simon, Hellfighters’ Blues, which invited the BBC Symphony Orchestra, brass especially, to show off its virtuosity.”

Financial Times, September 2024

“Simon’s musical imagination and cultural intelligence — to say nothing of his talent for deft orchestration — were on thrilling display in this 20-minute offering.”

Financial Times, January 2024

“But one of the reasons [Shostakovich’s Symphony] No.5 made such a thoughtful bookend to Simon’s wake-up call is that both composers share a sense of bothness — an ability to say two things at once, thread angst through merriment, smiles through tears.”

The Washington Post, January 2024

“Simon work upstages the showpieces at New York Philharmonic”

New York Classical, November 2023

“One of America’s largest exports is our music. Our culture. And with the release of brea(d)th, a landmark classical-and-spoken-word album composed by Grammy-nominated Carlos Simon as a response to George Floyd’s murder in 2020 and America’s century’s‑long embrace of anti-black bias, the struggle now has an extended soundtrack.”

Forbes, September 2023 (brea(d)th album)

“The five-part suite encompasses several moods from sorrowful and tense to hopeful and peaceful. It bears witness to the continued racial reckoning of America.”

Forbes, September 2023 (brea(d)th album)

“Simon indeed received shouts of joy and acclaim from the audience ― proof that he had captured our spirits.”

The Boston Musical Intelligencer, August 2023

“Simon’s score is a delight, propulsive and charming with a swishing jazz number and a lullaby ripped from Brahms.”

New York Times, May 2023

“One of the country’s hottest composers.”

Star Tribune, May 2023

“As with Simon’s other works that have delved critically into the history of race in American life, this new piece, from its title down through its music, feels like a gesture of reclamation.”

Boston Globe, February 2023

“At the concert’s jubilant peak, reached in the frenzy of Carlos Simon’s Amen!, inspired by the worshipful exultations of the Pentecostal church, the Barbican Hall shook with joy.”

The Times, November 2022

“Expectations were high — and the concert did not disappoint. Simon’s score, at times searing in its intensity, draws from many disparate elements… the work played out as a single involving journey, at once a visceral sonic encounter and a powerful prompt for reflection”

Boston Globe, October 2022

“Because of Simon’s understanding of balance (i.e. each entrance of light is shaped by a shadow, every sigh is answered by a breath of hope) and because of Noseda’s understanding of Simon, ‘This Land’ achieved that unlikeliest of musical combos: Proudly American and effortlessly chic.”

Washington Post, September 2022

“[…] if there’s a predictable aspect to Simon’s music, it’s that it will reliably strive to surprise”

Washington Post, September 2022

“This composer and his music must be heard, not only because he speaks to important issues but because his music is deeply evocative.”

San Francisco Classical Voice, July 2022

“Carlos Simon is a young composer on the rise, with an ear for social justice.”

NPR

“With additional textural influences of dark jazz, back-room blues, and film noir amour, Simon’s score could be described as hypnagogic (infra)vitalism.”

Opera Wire 2021

“As the center’s composer-in-residence, Simon has been creating works that have been brightening up programs with their sheen and sensitivity, and “Fate” was no exception.”

The Washington Post, November 2021

Fate Now Conquers, was thrilling to hear. It was so stirring that I felt this could be our anthem in our longed-for release from the dark of COVID.

DC Metro Theater Arts

“The program opened with “The Block,” a 2018 piece by the NSO’s new composer-in-residence, Carlos Simon — a response to the works of 20^th-century Harlem painter Romare Howard Bearden, whose bold, multitextured streetscapes emerge as a vibrant bustle of sound in Simon’s music. An early shimmer of strings evokes the sun inching over the rooftops; swelling horns surge and fade like passing cars, and around each corner is a new commotion or a welcome calm. It’s a gripping, vividly realized homage that builds to a dazzling climax. (Keep your ears open this year for a lot more from Simon.)”

Washington Post 2021

“Simon refashions musical history as excitable new realms with an unmistakable musical purpose essential for our times.”

Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times 2021

“Carlos Simon’s propulsive and galvanizing “Fate Now Conquers” nodded to Beethoven, but on his own brazen terms.”

New York Times

On Fate Now Conquers — “an inventive piece of whirling instrumental colors and propulsive metric changes.”

Boston Concert Reviews 2021

“This seven-minute tapestry is at once mournful and restorative; it skirts the danger of sentimentality through sheer integrity”

San Francisco Chronicle on 'Elegy: A Cry from the Grave'

“Carlos Simon’s new piece Fate Now Conquers, commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra, is based on the same Beethoven
movement. [It] is actually a perfectly engaging, propulsive, middle-weight concert opener.”

THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

“a fissile, kinetic curtain-raiser that darts around Beethovenian theme”

The Times on 'Fate Now Conquers' June 2021

“Carlos Simon is brave as a young scholar to be so patriotic to face this history and present it so beautifully.”

LAFAYETTE COLLEGE, October 2020

“In an effort to illuminate the systemic issues plaguing both Georgetown and the United States as a whole, Simon and Rahim started work on a rap-opera, commissioned by Georgetown, entitled “Requiem for the Enslaved.” The title of the work alone signals a need for remembrance, for the acknowledgment of the pain that was endured. ”

The Hoya, November 2020

“Simon’s gorgeous writing packs grit and grace together into a melodic line that carries unmistakable determination, a drive to realize itself, no matter what.”

New York Classical Review 2021

“a breezy, motoring overture”

The Guardian on 'Fate Now Conquers' 2021