A graduate in English Literature from University College, London and a classically trained pianist, Simon’s career as a television composer took off in the mid-1990s when scored numerous projects for the then-fledgling RDF Television, including the phenomenally successful series Scrapheap Challenge.
He first broke into drama with his score for The Passion for the BBC in 1998, starring Gina McKee, and his reputation grew through his work on Carlton’s much-praised remake of The Railway Children in 2000. Although passionate about working with and arranging for orchestral musicians, Simon has subsequently demonstrated his versatility working in the drama field, writing for guitars, drums and vocals on the series Monday Monday and Me and Mrs Jones (ITV), creating a jazz score with ukulele, trumpet and clarinet for Pickles: The Dog Who Won The World Cup (ITV) and combining drum loops and samples with string quartets on Fish (BBC1) and Lynda La Plante’s Above Suspicion (ITV).
His first feature film score was Lena:The Bride Of Ice, directed by Polly Steele (Women Talking Dirty, Let Me Go) and this was followed by Good, starring Viggo Mortensen, Jason Isaacs and Jodie Whittaker, for which, in addition to the score, he arranged several Mahler songs in a highly original line up of instruments, including zither, accordion and bass trombone.
In the documentary field, Simon composed the music for Pioneer Productions’ highly acclaimed film Life Before Birth. He wrote the title theme for BBC2’s 7 part series British Film Forever and has written the score for a number of historical drama documentaries, including Mary Shelley: The Birth Of Frankenstein (BBC) and Anthony and Cleopatra for Wall to Wall.
Recently, Simon has composed the music, including the Title Music, for ITV’s long-running, BAFTA award-winning series Long Lost Family, presented by Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell. He has also just completed the score for series 4 of the very popular CBBC series Hetty Feather, which begins transmission in May 2018.
His fascination with space has inspired Simon to write A Quarter Of A Million Miles, a multimedia docu-opera, featuring a series of vocal and orchestral pieces inspired by Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins’ book Carrying The Fire. He also writes songs and is occasionally brave enough to post online films of himself playing the piano and singing.