Artists / Faculties
Conductor: Maestro Geoffrey Simon
A born conductor, whose every gesture expresses music. Die Presse, Vienna
Australian conductor Geoffrey Simon is resident in London and has appeared there with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Chamber Orchestra and English Chamber Orchestra. His recording, The London Cello Sound which was recorded under his own label Cala Records, has been performed live for H.M. The Queen (Elizabeth II)and H.R.H. The Duke of Edinburgh of the United Kingdom.
Internationally, he has appeared with the American, Atlanta, City of Birmingham, Bournemouth, Fort Worth, Milwaukee, St Louis, Sapporo, Shanghai and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphonies, the Israel, Moscow, Munich and New Japan Philharmonics, The Residentie Orchestra of The Hague, the six major Australian orchestras and the Australian Opera.
His music directorships have included the Albany Symphony Orchestra (New York), the Sacramento Symphony (California) and the Orquestra Simfònica de Balears “Ciutat de Palma” (Mallorca). He is Music Director Emeritus of the Northwest Mahler Orchestra in Seattle, with which he has performed the Mahler cycle and Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony. He is Artistic Director of the Swiss Global Artistic Foundation (London and Montreux) and a jury member for Young Concert Artists in Paris, Leipzig and New York.
Geoffrey Simon was a student of Herbert von Karajan, Rudolf Kempe, Hans Swarowsky and Igor Markevich, and a major prize-winner at the first John Player International Conductors’ Award. He has made over forty recordings for a number of labels, combining discoveries with familiar works by Tchaikovsky, Respighi, Borodin, Mussorgsky, Smetana, Bloch, Grainger, Debussy, Ravel, Saint-Saëns and Les Six. Amongst the contemporary composers he has recorded are Barry Conyngham, John Downey, Paul Patterson and Zhou Long.
For his own label, Cala Records, Geoffrey Simon has brought together large ensembles of single instruments—violins, violas, cellos, double basses, horns, trumpets and trombones—drawn from London’s leading solo and orchestral musicians. The recordings have attracted interest amongst instrumentalists worldwide.