Image - Jordan Munns
a b o u t
Simon James Phillips is a musician whose creative approach activates alternative processes to broaden the relational connections between musics, participants, heritages, and practises. Originally trained as a classical pianist, Phillips has worked as a pianist, cellist, conductor, composer and artist in the disciplines of new and experimental music, classical music, non-western musics, improvisation, electronic music, theatre, dance, performance, film, the visual arts and research. He uses music as a methodology to question the imposition of dominant systems (incl. social, political and economic structures) that dictate modes of being. His approach emphasises the emancipatory potential of music as a medium for facilitating alternative strategies to organisation and expression.
He utilises transdisciplinary methodologies of collaboration and adaptation to produce immersive work that explores the perception of time and place through sound and spatialisation. He often incorporates methods of collaborative composition that invite creative contributions from musicians to shift the composer/performer relationship towards an initiator/creative-participant dynamic. He attempts to create work that form contextual links to the place and time of each performance and project.
Additionally, his practise is a series of experiments with various forms of governance. The multi-faceted and flexible nature of his work, the variety of collaborators and contexts, facilitate a diversity of organisational strategies. His aim is to generate a sort of freedom that some anthropologists have linked to seasonal variations in social structure - where constantly changing governance facilitates a continuing cross-fertilisation that questions, informs, adjusts, and adapts - so that structures become more fluid.
He has composed for Ensemble Resonanz, Ensemble Mosaik, Berlin Splitter Orchester, Zafraan Ensemble, Ensemble Offspring, the Australian Art Orchestra, the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, Musikkollegium Wintherthur, The Canberra Symphony Orchestra, Theater Basel, Deutsches Theater, Schauspielhaus Bochum. He has performed or composed for the Approximation Festival (Düsseldorf), Audio Art (Krakow), Bend/Break Festival (Berlin), Borealis Festival (Bergen), Darmstädter Ferienkurse (Darmstadt), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (Huddersfield), Jazzfest Berlin (Berlin), Maerzmusik (Berlin), Meakusma Festival (Eupen), and the Sydney International Festival of the Arts (Sydney).
Phillips’ is currently an artistic director and member of the Board of Trustees for the Gwaertler Stiftung, a Swiss foundation supporting the arts. There, he initiated and leads the SENSE program - a collaborative research project conducted together with several art collectives in the field of social practise to question and better understand the role of the Gwaertler Stiftung as a funding body.
Simon lives in Berlin, Germany.