Donemus Webwinkel — Simons, Marijn

Composer, conductor, and violinist Marijn Simons (The Netherlands, 1982) is the Artistic Director of the Liberme Chamber Orchestra and the chamber music series at the Liberme Castle in Belgium. In 2009, he founded the Simons Ensemble, with which he conducted several concerts and recordings. Since 2012, he has been Assistant Conductor at the Opernfestspiele Heidenheim. During the 2013 edition of the Opernfestspiele Heidenheim, Simons was the Artistic Director of the bi-annual Zeitgenossen festival.
His works have been commissioned and performed by such conductors and soloists as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Marin Alsop, Peter Eötvös, James MacMillan, Jun Märkl, Marcus Bosch, Christian Lindberg, Evelyn Glennie, Colin Currie, Liza Ferschtman, Dorothee Oberlinger, and by orchestras and ensembles such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, The Hague Philharmonic, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Aachen Symphony Orchestra, Prague Chamber Orchestra, Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra, Cuarteto Latinoamericano, Tambuco Percussion Ensemble, St. Michael Thorn Wind Orchestra, and the 12 Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic.
Simons was Composer-in-Residence at the Cabrillo Festival, Delft Chamber Music Festival, Orlando Festival and the Zeitgenossen festival. His compositions have been performed at concert venues such as the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Konzerthaus Dortmund, Cologne Philharmonic Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall (Los Angeles), National Centre for the Arts (Mexico City) and the Hanoi Opera House. He has received the Philip Morris Arts Prize, Limburg Culture Award and Wim Bary Perspective Award, and his composition The City of the Soul was awarded Best Dutch Choral Composition in 2001. Recordings of his music have been released by Composers’ Voice, Etcetera, NorthWest Classics, Quintone, Amstel Records and Erasmus labels.
October 2014 saw the world première of his first opera, Emilia Galotti, commissioned by the Koblenz Theatre. In September 2021, his chamber opera Lachesis was premièred at the Linz State Theatre. From May to August 2023, Woyzeck, ein OpernSpiel, was performed at the Aalen Theatre and the Opernfestspiele Heidenheim, with a revival in January 2024. Currently, Simons is working on his fourth opera, The Kidnapping of Charlie Chaplin, to be premièred in May 2026 at the Linz State Theatre.
Simons has conducted, amongst others, the WDR Radio Orchestra Cologne, Stuttgart Philharmonic, Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, Aachen Symphony Orchestra, New Music Ensemble Aachen, Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie (Koblenz), Cappella Aquileia (Heidenheim), Audite Nova Ensemble (Heidenheim), Orquesta Sinfónica del IPN (Mexico City), National Radio Chamber Orchestra (Bucharest), State Philharmonic Orchestra of Sibiu, St. Petersburg Chamber Orchestra, Yekaterinburg Chamber Orchestra, State Safonov Philharmonic Orchestra (Russia), Nieuw Amsterdams Peil, the Simons Ensemble, and the Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno. Programmes often include his works or premières by composers such as Fazil Say, Christian Lindberg, Gabriela Ortiz, Bernard Cavanna, Dan Dediu, Doina Rotaru, and Willem Jeths. With the Kharkiv Philharmonic, Simons conducted the first performance in the Ukraine of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 to include the symphonic movement Blumine and with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Guatemala, he did the Guatemalan première of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 6.
Simons has also performed worldwide as a violinist. Highlights from his solo career include the world première of Villa-Lobos’s violin concerto Fantasia de Movimentos Mixtos with the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico conducted by Enrique Diemecke, the Italian première of Milhaud’s 2nd violin concerto with the Orquesta Sinfónica Siciliana, and the Dutch première of MacMillan’s violin concerto A Deep but Dazzling Darkness with the Radio Chamber Orchestra conducted by the composer. In 2022 and 2023, he performed the complete Beethoven and Brahms violin sonatas with Sepp Grotenhuis at the Liberme Castle. This season, he will perform Brahms' and Ligeti's Horn Trios with the Principal Hornist of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Laurens Woudenberg. Simons also played as a Concert Master with several German orchestras, including the Cappella Aquileia, Aachen Symphony Orchestra, Nuremberg State Philharmonic, and at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein with the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra and the Duisburg Philharmonic.
Simons studied violin with Prof. Saschko Gawriloff, composition with Daan Manneke and James MacMillan, and conducting with Ed Spanjaard, Jean-Bernard Pommier, and Prof. Kenneth Kiesler.
August 2024