Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra Artistic and Music Director Carter Simmons is recognized throughout the community for creating opportunities and serving others through music. He provides leadership for the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra (MYSO) and its impressive artist management team and faculty, who serve thousands of students each season. Former students perform in many of the major orchestras and military bands across America and have attended all of the country’s most prestigious conservatories and schools of music.

As a conductor, Simmons also serves as Music Director of Milwaukee’s Festival City Symphony, a professional orchestra that provides free concerts to its audiences. He has conducted the Milwaukee Ballet Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and the Wisconsin Philharmonic, among others, and his conducting has taken him to venues across three continents, including recent performances in Poland’s National Forum of Music and Smetana Hall in Prague, Antwerp’s Queen Elisabeth Hall and Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw, throughout China, including Beijing’s Forbidden City Concert Hall, and Chicago’s renowned Orchestra Hall.

Simmons currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Youth Orchestra Division of the League of American Orchestras. 

Born near Washington, D.C., his training included participation at the Interlochen Center for the Arts and the Eastern Music Festival, as well as studies at the Tanglewood Music Center. He attended masterclasses with luminaries such as Leon Fleisher, Gunther Schuller, and Elizabeth A.H. Green, and observed rehearsals led by Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, and Daniel Barenboim, among others. Simmons expresses deep gratitude to his teachers Dr. John R. Locke, Robert Gutter, Larry Rachleff, and Professor Thomas L. Dvorak. 

He considers it an honor to steward one of America’s finest youth orchestras and to teach the incredible young musicians in this wonderful ensemble.