ADAM SIMMONS plays saxophones, clarinets, flutes, shakuhachi, fujara, toys and graduated from VCA in 1992. Since then, Adam has regularly worked in Melbourne, nationally and internationally with all manner of influential groups and artists including: Ernest Ranglin, Nigel Kennedy, Peter Brotzmann, John Hollenbeck, Jacek Kochan, Alessandra Garosi, Odean Pope, bucketrider, The Pearly Shells, BOLT Ensemble, Spiderbait, Zydeco Jump, Kutcha Edwards, Australian Art Orchestra, Gotye, Clocked Out, Tony Gould, Sandy Evans, Noriko Tadano, David Jones, Dave Brown, David Chesworth, Pugsley Buzzard and many more . Adam’s own ensembles include: Origami, Collider, La Societe des Antipodes (French/Australian), Adam Simmons Quartet, Adam Simmons Toy Band, Adam Simmons Creative Music Ensemble and New Blood.
Highlights from the past few years include: third (and final) Festival of Slow Music, launch of Shakuhachi Melbourne (a community ensemble), performed Nick Tsiavos 15hr Immersion at Dark MOFO, conducted a University of Melbourne engagement project with Kids off the Kerb, “100:25:1” performing duets with 100 different artists across 25 nights (with two research papers presented at jazz and social network conferences), released three CDs by Origami and five other CDs on his Fat Rain label, presented five major projects and released a 5 CD Box set as part of “The Usefulness of Art” 2017-18 concert series, was Lead Co-Artistic Director for Wangaratta Festival of Jazz & Blues (2017-18) where he led the Wangaratta Horns of Death, a 60 piece community, in a special full set with Spiderbait, and has graduated from the 2017 intake for the Australia Council Arts Leaders Program.
Other highlights include: world premiere of “Travelling Tales” at Piraeus Festival (Greece) with Intrarti Orchestra, Commission for Speak Percussion and Michael Kieran Harvey (2012), Special Award from Freedman Foundation (2004), Music Omi Artist Residency (USA, Fellowship 2001, Guest Curator 2007), Green Room Award for Musical Direction (2003 & 2004), Adam Simmons Retrospective, with 40 different acts over three weeks (2006)
Adam is endorsed by Selmer (bass clarinet), Temby Australia (alto sax and flutes) and has just been newly endorsed by Forestone Japan (tenor sax).
Awards
2019 Music Victoria Awards – The Usefulness of Art: 2017- 2018 (5 CD box set) nominated for Best Jazz Album
2018 The Age Music Victoria Awards – Origami’s Wu Xing nominated for Best Jazz Album
2013 The Age Music Victoria Awards – Origami’s Karaoke nominated for Best Jazz Album
2004 Special Award from Freedman Foundation
2004 Green Room Award for Best Musical Direction
2003 Green Room Award for Best Musical Direction
1999 Melbourne Fringe Festival Best Music Award
1996 ARIA Nomination for Best Jazz Album – Adam Simmons Quartet
Adam Simmons
Adam Simmons, Origami, Saxophone, Melbourne, Australia, Free Jazz, Contemporary Jazz, Chamber Jazz, Sun Ra, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Conduction%% / Induction
Adam Simmons: The Kites of Tianjin
★★★★★ Raphael Solarsh, Arts Hub
“Adam Simmons’ The Usefulness of Art has been a ground-breaking and magnificent musical journey. Simmons and
hiscollaborators have plotted a singularly innovative and evocative trail that has taken audience to the far-flung
corners of the world with Simmons’ exquisite sonic journals. Each concert has offered not just music inspired by
place but deeply personal narratives seamlessly intertwined.”
“... Adam Simmons is producing some of the most incredible jazz in Australia or anywhere else.”
Adam Simmons: The Calling
★★★★ Jessica Nicholas, The Age & Sydney Morning Herald
“... a deep philosophical – even existential – exploration of Simmons’ own identity and sense of belonging... the
most personal of all the works he has produced for his Usefulness of Art series.”
“The most impactful – and poignant – passage arose when Simmons and Iyengar performed a semi-improvised
duet. Standing behind Simmons, the dancer extended his hands gently around the saxophonist’s hips, allowing him
to lean forward at a sharp angle as streams of sonorous beauty emerged from his soprano horn. It was arresting
both musically and visually, reflecting the sense of empathy and shared experience that gives this work such a
strong emotional resonance.”
Read more
Adam Simmons: The Kites of Tianjin
★★★★★ Raphael Solarsh, Arts Hub
“Adam Simmons’ The Usefulness of Art has been a ground-breaking and magnificent musical journey. Simmons and
hiscollaborators have plotted a singularly innovative and evocative trail that has taken audience to the far-flung
corners of the world with Simmons’ exquisite sonic journals. Each concert has offered not just music inspired by
place but deeply personal narratives seamlessly intertwined.”
“... Adam Simmons is producing some of the most incredible jazz in Australia or anywhere else.”
Adam Simmons: The Calling
★★★★ Jessica Nicholas, The Age & Sydney Morning Herald
“... a deep philosophical – even existential – exploration of Simmons’ own identity and sense of belonging... the
most personal of all the works he has produced for his Usefulness of Art series.”
“The most impactful – and poignant – passage arose when Simmons and Iyengar performed a semi-improvised
duet. Standing behind Simmons, the dancer extended his hands gently around the saxophonist’s hips, allowing him
to lean forward at a sharp angle as streams of sonorous beauty emerged from his soprano horn. It was arresting
both musically and visually, reflecting the sense of empathy and shared experience that gives this work such a
strong emotional resonance.”
Adam Simmons: The Calling
—Des Cowley, Australian Books and Arts Review
“In an age when the funding of the arts is always an open question, Simmons’s project is a rallying cry for the
importance of art in our lives.”
“In a world rife with displacement, it (The Calling) questions where we truly belong, and argues for art as an
integral means of bringing us together.”
“As with previous concerts in the series, Adam Simmons demonstrated jazz’s capacity to continually extend its
horizons, drawing sustenance from an array of musical influences: world, classical, experimental. In looking for a
parallel – and while acknowledging that the music is of an entirely different order – I was reminded of Duke
Ellington’s masterpiece The Far East Suite, composed with Billy Strayhorn and inspired by their travels on tour
through Mumbai, Calcutta, Colombo, Lahore, Tehran, Isfahan, and other locales in the early 1960s. Like Ellington,
Simmons has chosen to recast his stories and journeys as an extended musical suite. On this occasion, the melding
of the Afrolankan Drumming System with the Adam Simmons Creative Music Ensemble was an astounding success.
The performance, heightened by strong visual and theatrical elements, again evidenced Simmons’s far-reaching
ambition for The Usefulness of Art program.
Adam Simmons and Vikram Iyengar in The Calling
—Roger Mitchell, Ausjazz.net
“It is impossible, and unnecessary, to compare The Calling with other concerts in The Usefulness of Art series. But
this work of art well and truly passed the test of taking us somewhere, of prompting exploration.”
Travelling Tales (fortyfivedownstairs)
—★★★★ Des Cowley, Australian Books and Arts Review
With three projects in the series now completed, Adam Simmons’s ‘The Usefulness of Art’ can increasingly be
viewed as a major musical statement by a mid-career artist. The radical decision by a musician most often
associated with jazz to conceptualise these large-scale performances – each in collaboration with a different
ensemble – as artworks rather than club gigs is testament to the broad-ranging ambitiousness of Simmons as a
composer. For Travelling Tales, the Arcko Symphonic Ensemble provided admirable support, performing their task
with extraordinary precision, an impressive feat given that it followed just two rehearsals.
Robert Spencer, Cadence
"Simmons is a monster."
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