Geoffrey Simon

Geoffrey Simon retired in April, 2021 from being Director of Music and Organist of Holy Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in Raleigh, NC, in order to concentrate on performing as organ recitalist and conductor. A Fellow of the College of Church Musicians at Washington National Cathedral, where he studied with Leo Sowerby and Paul Callaway, he holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University. He was Director of University Choirs at The American University in Washington, DC before becoming Professor of Church Music at Wesley Seminary. He has played or conducted in twenty US states and Canada, and in European capitals including Berlin, Copenhagen, and Warsaw. He is one of few Americans to play a recital at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, Germany, where J.S. Bach served as Cantor. Also a harpsichordist, he has performed at the Smithsonian Institution (Bach's D-minor concerto), the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress, and the National Cathedral (the 5^th Brandenburg Concerto), under conductor Alexander Schneider).

As Organist-Choirmaster for Christ Lutheran Church in Washington, DC for thirteen years, he guided the process resulting in installation of the first major 20^th-century mechanical-action organ in the city, built by the firm of Rudolf von Beckerath, of Hamburg, Germany. That organ, of 30 stops and 45 ranks of pipes (2180 in all) has been critically acclaimed and used in recitals for conventions of the American Guild of Organists. Among its many recitals was a series of sixteen concerts of the complete organ works of J.S. Bach, shared by Dr. Simon and Marian Ruhl Metson, then Organist at The Lutheran Church of the Reformation on Capitol Hill.

As Music Director for the Martin Luther Jubilee in 1985, Simon played and conducted massed choirs for a televised service and dramatic production from the Nat'l. Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC and conducted 80 members of the National Symphony Orchestra plus the Howard University Choir in a gala concert at the Kennedy Center. During the Kennedy Center's Mozart Festival under conductor Julius Rudel, he and Donald Sutherland presented the complete Mozart organ works. For a decade, he was organist and choral conductor for Adas Israel, the DC area's largest Conservative synagogue. He has served as a resident musician at Holden Village, the Lutheran retreat center in the North Cascade mountains.

Dr. Simon is a contributing music critic for the Classical Voice of North Carolina, that state's online arts site. He lives in Raleigh with his wife, Sarah Morgan; their home features a concert hall seating 75, where they regularly host solo and chamber music programs.

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