Simon Smith was first played on NTS on 30 November 2023. Songs played include Piano Sonata No. 2.

Simon Smith was born in Northumberland in 1983. At St Mary’s Music School in Edinburgh he studied piano with Richard Beauchamp and composition with Tom David Wilson and James MacMillan. He read Music at Clare College, Cambridge, graduating in 2005, where he studied composition with Giles Swayne.

The majority of Simon’s efforts as a pianist have been devoted to contemporary music. In 2000 he gave a recital of the complete piano music of James MacMillan, and subsequently recorded it for Delphian Records.

Following a performance in 2005 of Ligeti’s complete Etudes, he was acclaimed as “a phenomenon - nothing daunts him, technically or musically” (The Scotsman). He has subsequently recorded discs of solo and chamber works by Hafliði Hallgrímsson and Thomas Wilson for Delphian.

Simon now lives in Edinburgh and works professionally as a music engraver, having completed large scale projects for Boosey & Hawkes and the Stockhausen Verlag among others.