World Premiere: November 21, 2017
Last HSO performance: HSO Premiere
Instrumentation: Two flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, bass trombone, timpani, 3 percussionists, piano and strings
Duration: 12’

Carlos Simon was named Kennedy Center Composer-in-Residence in April 2021 and serves in that position for three years. Simon’s music was first heard at Kennedy Center in April 2018, when then Resident Composer Mason Bates included the string quartet An Elegy: A Cry from the Grave (2015), honoring the lives of shooting victims Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner, in his JFK Jukebox Series. The following year, Washington National Opera, as part of its American Opera Initiative, commissioned a one-act opera from Simon, and his Night Trip, with a libretto by Sandra Seaton, was premiered in January 2020. During his residency, Simon will compose and present music for the National Symphony Orchestra and Washington National Opera, act as an ambassador for new music, and participate in educational, social impact, community engagement, and major institutional initiatives. 

Carlos Simon, born in Atlanta in 1986, grew up playing organ at his father’s church, immersed himself in music in high school, earned degrees from Georgia State University and Morehouse College, and completed his doctorate at the University of Michigan, where he studied with Evan Chambers and Grammy-winning composer Michael Daugherty. Simon also studied in Baden, Austria and at the Hollywood Music Workshop and New York University’s Film Scoring Summer Workshop. He taught at Spelman College and Morehouse College in Atlanta before being appointed in 2019 to the faculty of Georgetown University, which also commissioned him to compose Requiem for the Enslaved, a multi-genre tribute to commemorate the 272 enslaved men, women and children sold by the University in 1838. Requiem for the Enslaved was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for its 2022 recording on Decca.

In addition to his recent opera, Simon has composed works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo voice, chorus, concert band and film, several of them on commissions from such noted organizations as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera and Philadelphia Orchestra. He has also performed as keyboardist with the Boston Pops, Jackson Symphony and St. Louis Symphony, toured Japan in 2018 under the sponsorship of the United States Embassy in Tokyo and US/Japan Foundation performing in some of the country’s most sacred temples and important concert venues, served as music director and keyboardist for Grammy Award-winner Jennifer Holliday, and appeared internationally with Grammy-nominated soul artist Angie Stone. Simon received the 2021 Medal of Excellence of the Sphinx Organization, which is dedicated to promoting and recognizing Black and Latinx classical music and musicians. His additional honors include the Marvin Hamlisch Film Scoring Award, Theodore Presser Foundation Award, ASCAP’s Morton Gould Young Composer Award, fellowships from the Sundance Institute and Cabrillo Festival for Contemporary Music, and a residency at the 2021 Ojai Festival.

Simon wrote, “Amen! was commissioned by the University of Michigan Band in celebration of the university’s 200th anniversary in 2017; it was premiered on November 21, 2017 at Hill Auditorium. The orchestral arrangement was commissioned in 2019 by the Reno Philharmonic, Gateways Music Festival and American Composers Orchestra. Amen! is a homage to my family’s four-generational affiliation with the Pentecostal Church. My intent in Amen! is to re-create the musical experience of the African-American Pentecostal Church services that I enjoyed being a part of while growing up in this denomination.”