Recipient of the Innovation in Business 2024 “Most Innovative International Composer & Performer” and “Musical Education Excellence” as well as the 2023 “Most Innovative Piano Music Composer UK” awards and nominated for a Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists in 2014, Simon-Mary Vincent is an Anglo-Hungarian performer and composer of acoustic and electronic music, who has been challenging the boundaries of genre and musical expression with a highly personal language since the early 1990’s.
“Visionary and expressive”, “rich and surprising”, “incredibly individual”, “masterful compositions”, “an immersive experience”, Simon-Mary’s music has attracted praise and radio play from critics as varied as Fran Wilson, Lauren Redhead, Ben Watson, Julian Cowley, Nick Luscombe, Robert Hugill, Robert D. Rusch, Massimo Ricci, Gilles Peterson and Mr. Scruff, and has been reviewed in publications including The Wire, International Piano, De:Bug, Knowledge Magazine, Straight No Chaser, Dragon Jazz, Avant Music News and Jazzwise.
Active for many years in the UK’s improvised and experimental music scene, she was also resident DJ in the Cookin’ Room at LTJ Bukem’s Progression Sessions, releasing compositions and performances on Erstwhile Records, EMANEM, L’innomable, Good Looking Records, as well as her own label Vision of Sound to critical acclaim with trumpeter Tom Arthurs, The Occasional Trio featuring bassist Roland Fidezius and drummer Kay Lübke, percussionist Asher Gamedze, and Ten Trees Conversations with percussionist Tumi Mogorosi, sound interventionist Robert Machiri and spiritual philosopher Kupawashe Mtata.
In addition, she founded and directed the EMW Experimental Orchestra premiering works at Club Transmediale, Tresor and the Akademie der Künste (Berlin) and has lectured in subjects ranging from 2-channel and 8-channel acousmatic composition, audio installation and interdisciplinary performance art to urban musical and sonic landscape theory (socioacoustics), afrofuturism, sound design, feminist performance art, and network and game theory.
Simon-Mary‘s unique work has led to appearances worldwide at the Tallinn Music Week, TechFestival Copenhagen, Erased Tapes Sound Gallery, Glastonbury Festival, Akademie der Künste (Berlin), ICA London, Club Transmediale (Berlin), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Darmstadt), Visiones Sonoras (Mexico City), Q-02 Brussels, as well as on Resonance FM, BBC Radio 3, Ministry of Sound Radio and FM4-Austria among many others.
She has received commissions from RPO Principal trombonist Matthew Gee, BBC Radio 3 Late Junction’s Nick Luscombe, The Richard Wagner Museum’s ‘Amor Mundi Festival’, as well as the Artist Residency Schloss Balmoral, and has recently released a series of new eps featuring critically acclaimed solo electronic compositions.
Having completed a new extensive 4-channel composition for the Humber Street Gallery Thursday Lates (UK), she is currently preparing piano works by György Kurtág for performance as part of the Játékok Piano Duo with pianist & composer Nigel Bartram, and composing a series of musical reflections based on the works of Hildegard of Bingen as well new works to celebrate the 10th anniversary of The Occasional Trio.