Simone Baron
Simone Baron is a polyglot pianist, accordionist and composer who has performed and toured throughout western Europe, the Middle East, Canada, the US, and Brazil. Steeped in her Judeo-Roman roots, her work is at once vividly imaginative yet honestly lyrical, driven with relentless intensity yet colorful and engaging, uncompromising and complex yet playful, wondrous and irreverent; often emotionally intense adventures inspired by unlikely and disparate muses. A 2021 alumnus of Dee Dee Bridgewater's Woodshed Network and a 2019 alumnus of the Banff International Workshop in Jazz & Creative Music, Simone has been awarded residencies and fellowships at the Hambidge Center, I-Park Foundation, ArtOMI, Strathmore, University of Maryland’s NextLOOK, Avaloch Farm, the Banff Centre, and Spectrum Toronto. In 2016 she founded Arco Belo, a genre-fluid chamber ensemble that dances in the spaces between jazz, avant chamber music, and folk tunes from around the globe. They have been awarded grants from the Maryland State Arts Council, South Arts and Chamber Music America towards touring and recording their new album. Committed to building a more inclusive musical community, Simone is a founding member of the Boulanger Initiative, a DC based non profit advocacy group that fights gender discrimination in concert programming. Simone is an endorsed Victoria Artist and plays a Poeta XB Accordion.