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.
With the cessation of live concerts Simone continued to record streamed events with Seattle, Pittsburgh, Charlotte and Greater Bridgeport Symphonies. 21/22 season included extensive US touring with debuts and return visits to orchestras such as Colorado, North Carolina, St. Louis, Grand Rapids, Omaha, Quebec, Princeton, Monterey, Bakersfield, Marin, Ridgefield and Wyoming symphonies, Erie Philharmonic and Florida Orchestra, as well as a Celebrity Series (Boston) recital debut which featured the world premiere of a commission from composer Reena Esmail. The 22/23 season is starting with La Jolla and Peninsula Music Festivals, followed by orchestral performances in Winston-Salem, Virginia, Marin, Lexington, Modesto, New Haven, Bozeman, Portsmouth and Jacksonville. In recital, Simone can be heard in California, Florida, and Spain as well as making her debut at 92nd Street Y in New York City.
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. In recent seasons, she has also appeared at the Edinburgh Festival performing Barber under the direction of Stéphane Denève, and at the Mostly Mozart Festival performing Mozart under Louis Langrée. She has also performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl with both Nicholas McGegan and Ludovic Morlot, and at Walt Disney Concert Hall with Gustavo Dudamel.
“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.