Carlos Simon

Carlos Simon is a living American composer whose orchestral works draw on Black American musical traditions, from spirituals to popular dance forms, blended with the language of the concert orchestra. He has held posts with major American orchestras and is widely performed by US symphonies today. His music tends to be direct, rhythmically vivid, and rooted in stories or histories he wants listeners to connect with, making him one of the most frequently programmed living composers on American orchestra series.

Simon's orchestral music favors clear rhythmic drive over dense complexity, often built from short repeating patterns that shift and layer as instruments enter one by one. Percussion and brass frequently carry the pulse, while strings and winds supply melodic lines that lean on blues-inflected turns and the shapes of spirituals or gospel music. Pieces are often built as suites or sets of contrasting short movements, each with its own tempo and character, rather than one long continuous span. A movement might open with a bare rhythmic figure that gradually gathers instruments and volume, then close abruptly rather than with a long fade. Full works typically run under 20 minutes. Concertante writing, such as paired soloists trading and combining material, appears in his larger commissioned scores, giving soloists conversational, dance-like exchanges against the orchestra.