Carlos Simon Extends Composer-in-Residence Contract with Kennedy Center

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Carlos Simon Releases brea(d)th - Landmark Work Recorded Live with the Minnesota Orchestra

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Carlos Simon Announced as Inaugural Composer Chair with Boston Symphony Orchestra

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'Requiem for the Enslaved', Carlos's debut album on Decca, out now.

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'Together', Decca Classics, with first single 'Near the Cross' Out Now.

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

– Los Angeles Times

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

– new York Times

About Carlos Simon

"Carlos Simon is a young composer on the rise, with an ear for social justice."
–NPR Music

Carlos Simon is a GRAMMY-nominated composer, curator and activist. Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, his compositions range from concert music for large and small ensembles to film scores with influences of jazz, gospel, and neo-romanticism. Simon is the Composer-in-Residence for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

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Latest Album

Recordings

The Best Cuisine

August 22, 2025

The Best Cuisine: Music of Carlos Simon, recorded by Washington DC’s Chiarina Chamber Players, highlights the power of Carlos Simon’s storytelling through his chamber music. Centered around The Best Cuisine, a work commissioned by Chiarina, the album features music for combinations of strings, piano, and baritone. Released by Azica Records in August 2025.

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Works

Featured
for Orchestra
2023

Four Black American Dances

Orchestral

Dance has always been a part of any culture. Particularly in Black American communities, dance is and has been the fabric of social gatherings. There have been hundreds, perhaps thousands of dances created over the span of American history that have originated from the social climate of American slavery, Reconstruction and Jim Crow. This piece is an orchestral study of the music that is associated with the Ring Shout, the Waltz, Tap Dance and the Holy Dance. All of these dances are but a mere representation of the wide range of cultural and social differences within the Black American communities.

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For Violin, Cello, Flute/Piccolo/Alto Flute, Clarinet/Bass Clarinet in Bb, Trumpet, Piano Spoken Word Artist
2021

Requiem for the Enslaved

Chamber Music

Requiem for the Enslaved explores the sacred and historical, and honors the lives of those bought and sold. Original text by Marco Pavé.

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Orchestra
2020

FATE NOW CONQUERS

Orchestral

This piece was inspired by a journal entry from Ludvig van Beethoven’s notebook written in 1815: “Iliad. The Twenty-Second Book But Fate now conquers; I am hers; and yet not she shall share In my renown; that life is left to every noble spirit And that some great deed shall beget that all lives shall inherit.”

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“A modern major composer: an artist whose windows are thrown wide open to the world, and whose musical scope of late lands like a grand panorama of American life.”

– The Washington Post

Schedule

Upcoming
Complete Schedule

19th October 2025

Indiana University

IN Musical Arts Center
Bloomington, IN

Carlos Simon: Fate Now Conquers (2020)
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-Flat Major, Op. 19 (1795/98)
Beethoven: Leonore Overture No. 3, Op. 72b (1806)
Timo Andres: The Blind Banister (2015)

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20th & 21st October 2025

Pensacola Symphony Orchestra

Olive Baptist Church
Pensacola, FL

Program to include Carlos Simon's work The Block

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News

Latest
NEWS
October 3, 2025

For Your Grammy® Consideration: The Best Cuisine

A new album of music for strings, piano, and baritone recorded by Chiarina Chamber Players.

Carlos Simon

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