Dr John De Simone

Biography

John De Simone is a composer, educator and researcher whose work explores collaboration, sonic texture and contemporary musical identity. Born in Aylesbury in 1974 and now based in Scotland, he studied postgraduate composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, graduating with distinction, before completing a PhD through the University of St Andrews and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

De Simone is currently Senior Lecturer in Composition at the University of Aberdeen, having previously taught at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

His music has been commissioned and performed by leading ensembles and performers including the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Edinburgh Quartet, Red Note Ensemble, Aurelia Saxophone Quartet, Ensemble Klang, Percussion Group The Hague and the New Juilliard Ensemble. His work has appeared at festivals including BBC Tectonics, Gaudeamus, Spitalfields, Verona Risuona and Gothenburg GAS Festival, and has been broadcast internationally.

Alongside concert music, De Simone has developed interdisciplinary collaborations spanning theatre, technology and multimedia performance. His collaboration with Fish and Game on Alma Mater received international attention as one of the first iPad theatre works and toured internationally from London to Melbourne.

A significant figure within Scotland’s new music landscape, he is the founder and director of Ensemble Thing, an ensemble recognised for adventurous programming, collaborative performance practice and support for new work. From 2016–2018 he served as the inaugural Composer in Residence for the sound festival.

His artistic approach combines contemporary classical practice with a deep interest in human connection, collective creativity and experimental forms of expression. As he describes it through the ethos of Ensemble Thing: “We play the music of the people we love, with the people we love, in the places we love.”

Research Overview

John De Simone's research is rooted in composition as a critical practice, exploring how music can engage with and reflect the human condition. His work has consistently interrogated themes of mental and physical health, class, identity, and the influence of consumer culture, developing compositional methodologies that seek to translate lived human experience into contemporary notated music. This practice-led research has produced a substantial body of work performed by leading ensembles across the UK and internationally.

Current Research

Current research extends his critical framework into new territory, exploring the integration of AI tools within commercial digital audio workstations as a compositional methodology. This work interrogates the boundaries between composer, performer, practitioner and machine, raising fundamental questions about authorship, creative agency and musical identity in an era of human-computational collaboration. Situated at the intersection of artistic research, music technology and the emerging ethics of AI in the creative arts, this practice connects directly to broader interdisciplinary debates about what it means to make and own creative work when the creative process is distributed across human and computational intelligence. This research is currently informing a commercial film score commission, demonstrating its reach beyond the purely academic into industry and professional practice.

Knowledge Exchange

Formal KE Roles

• Research and Knowledge Exchange Development Officer, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (2011–2019)
• Enterprise and Innovation Champion, School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture, University of Aberdeen (current)
• Member, University of Aberdeen Enterprise and Innovation Committee (current)
• Member, Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities KETIC panel (2014–16)
• Deputised on the Universities Scotland Research and Commercialisation Directors Group

KE Programmes Designed and Led

• Designer, developer and manager of the Athenaeum Awards at RCS — distributed over £150,000 across 80+ projects with an 88% progression rate
• Commissioner and editor of The New Athenaeum (2024), documenting the scheme's impact
• Developer and curator of the RCS Exchange Talks series

Industry and Commercial Partnerships

• Current film score commission with Stanton Media and Deviant Films
• SFC Interface Innovation Voucher — mapping exercise between RCS and New Music Scotland (£5,000)
• Co-producer of Jan Tait and the Bear with Emily Dolittle and Ensemble Thing, securing Opera America funding ($15,000)

Creative Enterprise

• Founder and Artistic Director, Ensemble Thing (2004–present)
• Founder and Director, Ensemble Muse, The Netherlands (2000–2004) 
• Inaugural Composer in Residence, Sound Festival (2016–2019)
• Director, Scottish Awards for New Music (2019)
• Instigator, producer and director, Face to Face: Music and Conversation — transnational online collaboration (2021)

Community and Social Enterprise

• Director, Musical Bridges Project — connecting unaccompanied asylum seekers with professional musicians (2006)
• Music Leader, Polyphony Project, Common Wheel, Gartnavel Royal Hospital (2004–2009)
• InReach Project Director - SAMH Arts Festival

Teaching Responsibilities

Postgraduate Programmes Coordinator for the MMus Programme, teach on numerous modules throughout our degree programmes, course coordinator for several.