Simon James Phillips is a musician/composer whose creative approach activates alternative processes to broaden the relational connections between musics, participants, heritages, and practises. He utilises transdisciplinary methodologies of collaboration and adaptation to question dominant approaches to artistic creation. He often incorporates methods of collaborative composition that invite creative contributions from musicians who shift the composer/performer relationship towards an initiator/creative-participant dynamic.

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 studied and worked as a classical pianist for over 10 years before making the transition to composition and creative/improvisatory performance. Musically, Simon constructs an open sonic atmospheres that provides the audience with time to reflect upon and explore the sound. He has developed a technique where he manipulates the overtones to the piano to create an almost electronic wash of sound. By controlling the pace of a piece’s development, his intention is to affect the perception of time through music. He is also attracted to the tension between trying to recreate inorganic sound with the piano, the limitations of the instrument and his own physical mechanism.