About Simone

“I live to make music. It is the most direct way to touch the heart of humanity. Offering something pure and intangible to take away with them. In this small way I try to give something good back into the world.“

Simone travels around the world performing in various ensembles:  Spira mirabilis, Camerata Bern, Lucerne Festival Strings, Geneva Camerata, and also as chamber musician and regular soloist in Switzerland, France and New Zealand.

She plays an important part in the music scene in Bern, Switzerland as Concertmaster of Opus Bern and Orchestra degli Amici, leads the second violins in the Berner Chamber Orchester, plays regularly in Camerata Bern, and is the 1st violinist in the chamber ensemble La Strimpellata Bern.

2012-16  saw her in the role of  Primaria of the award winning Faust Quartet playing in concert halls around Europe and also looking for new ways to comminucate with audiences. Not only in chamber music formations, but with painters, sculptors, musicians from other cultures, and improvising with her quartet colleagues.

Invited in 2014 with the Faust Quartett and 2017 with the Paladino Ensemble to tour the country by Chambermusic New Zealand, she has also organized tours with her pianist Petya Mihneva in 2008 and 2010.

The highlight of 2017 was being invited to lead the London BBC Symphony Orchestra in the Barbican under chief conductor Sakari Oramo and 2018 saw her win the position of Concertmaster in two different orchestras in Switzerland, and worked with the legendary Kryzstov Penderecki, and violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja

Growing up in New Zealand with a Swiss father and South African mother, then moving to Switzerland in 2004 has given Simone quite a multicultural background. As well as classical music, Simone has travelled to Tokyo to perform in a concert dedicated to “World Peace” with a hip hop group; and when she was 8 years old toured China, Taiwan and Japan with the Swiss Kiwi Yodelers’ Group playing Appenzell music.

Simone was born in Auckland, New Zealand and started violin lessons with her twin brother as a pre-schooler. She attended St Cuthbert’s College as a scholarship student and continued on to complete her Masters at the University of Auckland with Mary O’Brien in 2004 and was awarded the Senior Prize for the highest postgraduate mark. During her time in New Zealand she won the National Chamber Music Competition twice, was concertmaster of various youth orchestras from the age of 11, appeared on National Radio and Television, and performed most of the major violin concertos as a soloist with orchestra.

She continued her studies in Switzerland completeing a Konzertdiplom with Monika Urbaniak at the Hochschule der Künste Bern and was the first ever New Zealander to be accepted into the Thy Chambermusic Course in Denmark. In 2007 she began studying with Giuliano Carmignola in his Soloist Class at Lucerne’s Conservatory of Music. She was awarded the Edwin Fischer Prize for best Soloisten Diplom 2009 and performed Chausson’s Poeme as the soloist with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra in one of Europe’s best performance venues: the Kultur und Kongresszentrum Luzern.

These days Simone is completing her trials as second concertmaster at Argovia Philharmonic and as co-leader of the Kammerphilharmonie Graubünden, working in projects with the legendary composer Krzyzstof Penderecki and world famous violinists Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Viktoria Mullova, and enjoying getting to know the newest member of the family – her Dallacosta violin, in her apartment in Bern.