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“[Porter’s] assured, lovingly lyrical, occasionally frisky playing only confirmed what is becoming common knowledge in the musical world: that she is on the cusp of a major career.”
Violinist Simone Porter has been recognized as an emerging artist of impassioned energy, interpretive integrity, and vibrant communication. In the past few years she has debuted with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic; and with a number of renowned conductors, including Stéphane Denève, Gustavo Dudamel, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Nicholas McGegan, Ludovic Morlot, and Donald Runnicles. Born in 1996, Simone made her professional solo debut at age 10 with the Seattle Symphony and her international debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London at age 13. In March 2015, Simone was named a recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant. Simone’s recent seasons include extensive US touring with debuts and return visits to orchestras such as Colorado, North Carolina, St. Louis, Oregon, Hawaii, Grand Rapids, Omaha, Quebec, Jacksonville symphonies, Erie Philharmonic, Florida Orchestra and many more. In 24/25 season Porter will return to Nashville and Baltimore symphonies, as well as Santa Rosa, Monterey and Westchester symphonies with a debut with Arkansas Symphony and a visit to Johnson City Symphony in TN. Simone will be artist in residence with the Oregon Symphony starting in the 25/26 season, her first appearance being a performance of Philip Glass Concerto No. 1 with David Danzmayr.
In February 2024, Simone released her debut album ad tendo, which was inspired by the ideas of philosopher Simone Weil and featured all solo violin repertoire including the premiere recording of Reena Esmail’s Drishti.
Internationally, Simone has performed with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra with Gustavo Dudamel; the Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira in Rio de Janeiro; the National Symphony Orchestra of Costa Rica; the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong; the Royal Northern Sinfonia; the Milton Keynes City Orchestra in the United Kingdom; Orquesta Clasica Santa Cecilia de la Fundacion Excelentia in Madrid; the Opera de Marseille and at the Edinburgh Festival performing Barber under the direction of Stéphane Denève,
““Porter commands the technical chops, throbbing vibrato but, most importantly, the expressive panache, needed to bring the music’s rhapsodic lyricism to life…Porter’s silken-toned virtuosity puts her right up there with the finest interpreters of her generation.””
Recent recital highlights include a tour in Spain with pianist Pallavi Mahidhara and debuts at Celebrity Series in Boston and NY92, both of which featured the newly commissioned piece by composer Reena Esmail. Simone will return to FL in recital in January of 2025, and debut at the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston in March 2025. A devoted chamber musician, Simone can be heard at La Jolla Summerfest in August of 2024, followed by projects with Bay Chamber Music, Moab Music Festival and Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival. Together with her colleagues violinist Blake Pouliot and pianist Hsin-I Huang, Simone will present a program at Cliburn Foundation in Fort Worth, TX and Broad Stage in Santa Monica, CA in spring of 2025.
At the invitation of Esa-Pekka Salonen, Simone performed his work ‘Lachen verlernt’ (‘Laughing Unlearnt’), at the New York Philharmonic’s “Foreign Bodies,” a multi-sensory celebration of the work of the composer and conductor. Simone made her Carnegie Zankel Hall debut on the Emmy Award-winning TV show From the Top: Live from Carnegie Hall followed in November 2016 by her debut in Stern Auditorium. She will return to Carnegie in December of 2024 together with cellist Joshua Roman as a part of their Well-Being Concert. In June 2016, her featured performance of music from Schindler’s List with Maestro Gustavo Dudamel and members of the American Youth Symphony was broadcast nationally on the TNT Network as part of the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award: A Tribute to John Williams.
Raised in Seattle, Washington, Simone studied with Margaret Pressley as a recipient of the Dorothy Richard Starling Scholarship, and was then admitted into the studio of Robert Lipsett, with whom she studied at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles. Summer studies have included many years at the Aspen Music Festival, Indiana University’s Summer String Academy, and the Schlern International Music Festival in Italy.
Simone Porter performs on a 1740 Carlo Bergonzi violin made in Cremona Italy on generous loan from The Master’s University, Santa Clarita, California.upcoming dates
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“Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” So wrote the philosopher Simone Weil in Gravity and Grace, a book that compounds her aphorisms and notes, most of which contend with a search for spiritual purity. Gravity and Grace was published posthumously in 1947, well before the advent of the term “attention economy,” which emerged over twenty years ago and refers to the imbalance between the massive amount of information available on the internet and the limited amount of attention (and time) humans have to offer. In 2019, this disparity is more pronounced than ever: practically every online media platform is designed to apply the logic of scarcity to our minds, to treat our attention as a commodity to be harvested and manipulated. One of the cruel paradoxes of modern life is that the companies that abuse our attention treat is as much more precious than we do.