Geoffrey Simon (born 3 July 1946) is an Australian conductor resident in London.
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Geoffrey Simon was born on 3 July 1946 in Adelaide.[1] He was a student of Herbert von Karajan, Rudolf Kempe, Hans Swarowsky and Igor Markevitch, 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 familiar works with world premieres of rediscovered obscure works by Tchaikovsky, Respighi, Borodin, Mussorgsky, Smetana, Grainger, Debussy, Ravel, Saint-Saëns and Les six.
For his own label, Cala Records, Geoffrey Simon has a series of records where he has brought together ensembles of single instruments—all violins, violas, cellos, double basses, horns, trumpets and trombones—drawn from London's leading solo and orchestral musicians. The recordings have attracted interest among instrumentalists, composers and audiences worldwide.
He has appeared in London with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Chamber Orchestra and English Chamber Orchestra.
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 Opera Australia.
His music directorships have included the Albany Symphony Orchestra (New York), the Sacramento Symphony (California) and the Orquestra Simfònica de Balears "Ciutat de Palma" (Majorca).
From 1982 through 1984 he was conductor of the University of North Texas College of Music Symphony Orchestra in Denton, Texas.
He has conducted a Mahler cycle as Music Director of the Northwest Mahler Festival in Seattle. 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.