Music Ministry - Meet our Organist-Choirmaster

J. David Simmons, Organist-Choirmaster at St. Matthew’s Anglican Catholic Church, Newport Beach, California since 2003, is a graduate of the University of Southern California (M.M.) and the University of Kansas (B.M.). 

On full scholarship at USC, he was honored with the Grancell and Liberace Foundation awards. He was also awarded the Stewart Grant for graduate music study by the Musical Research Society. 

At the University of Kansas the faculty granted him the Preyer Award for the outstanding graduating music major.

He became a church organist at the age of 12 and has continuously served churches of various denominations as organist or organist-choirmaster since then.

He has collaborated with Sir David Willcocks as organist at Choral Evensong, and with conductor Robert Shaw as piano accompanist. 

Also a composer, he has written over 200 liturgical choral pieces especially for the St. Matthew’s Parish Choir.  He has performed organ recitals, including several pipe organ dedication concerts, in California and the Midwest, and has performed piano recitals and concerts with orchestra all over the world, including the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Bratislava Chamber Orchestra in Austria.

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