John De Simone

John De Simone (1974, Aylesbury, England) is a Glasgow based composer, educator and researcher. He studied postgraduate composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal Conservatoire, The Hague where he graduated with distinction. He is currently a lecturer and researcher at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

He has enjoyed regular commissions throughout his career and has written for numerous groups including the BBC SSO, The Edinburgh Quartet, Red Note Ensemble, Aurelia Sax Quartet, the Mondriaan String Quartet, Percussion Group The Hague, Ensemble Klang and the New Juilliard Ensemble. His music has been performed in several major festivals including, Verona Risuona, FUSELeeds, BBC Tectonics, Spitalfields, Gaudeamus and Gothenberg GAS festival.

He also enjoys interdisciplinary collaboration and his work with Fish and Game on Alma Mater received international acclaim and coverage as the world’s first piece of IPad theatre, and went on to tour internationally from London to Melbourne.
John is also active as an artistic leader in new music - he was founder and director of the Dutch student new music group Ensemble Muse, who worked with the composers Louis Andriessen, Steve Martland, Fredreck Rzewski and Steve Reich in addition to 20 new premieres of young composers work. He is currently director of Ensemble Thing, which he founded in 2004 which has become one of the most unique leading new music groups in Scotland, having performed internationally, commissioned a great deal of new work and received wide critical acclaim.

John believes music should connect directly with the community and reflect the human condition and this is summed up by the ethos of Ensemble Thing – “We play the music of the people we love, with the people we love, in the places we love”