Bonnie Ward Simon is President of Simon & Simon, LLC and Maestro Classics™ (formerly Magic Maestro Music®). She is also the Executive Producer and Creative Director for Stories in Music™. From 1989-1998, she was the Executive Director of the Washington Chamber Symphony, the resident chamber orchestra at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington, DC. She has served as an advisor to Scholastic Publications and is an internationally published writer in the fields of music and children. Click here to read an interview with Bonnie Simon published in Scholastic Parent & Child magazine.

During her years as Executive Director of the Washington Chamber Symphony, Bonnie Ward Simon became well-known as the co-creator of their widely acclaimed multigenerational programming. The Chamber Symphony’s Concerts for Young People series enjoyed over a decade of sold-out concerts at the Kennedy Center, educating and delighting parents, grandparents, and children ages 6-12. She founded Viva Vivaldi!™, the Re-Creation of Vivaldi’s All-Girl Orchestra, the international competition for young women held at the Kennedy Center. With partner and husband, Stephen Simon, she co-created the Great Composer Series and the Stories in Music™ series in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, as well as the Annual Holiday Sing-Along, which The Wall Street Journal called “the hottest holiday ticket” in Washington, DC.

She is the author of a new narration for The Tortoise and the Hare, a work for symphony orchestra and narrator, with music composed by Stephen Simon. This work, that premiered at the Kennedy Center in 1995, was performed by the Boston Pops in 1996 and is now released as a title on the Stories in Music® series.

Bonnie Ward Simon is the creator of the program books for the Stories in Music™ series as well as being the female voice on all of the Stories in Music™ CDs. Click here to learn more about the Stories in Music ™ series from Maestro Classics.

She holds degrees in music (Vassar College) and music education (New Jersey State College), as well as Japanese Labor Relations, Modern Japanese History, and Ancient Chinese History (Columbia University). She has also taught middle school music, worked in administration at Carnegie Hall, and written extensively for Washington Parent Magazine. Before moving to Washington, DC, she served on the boards of directors of Carnegie Hall, the Guggenheim Museum of Art, and New York City Opera.

Bonnie Ward Simon is the mother of Basil and Sebastian Simon, the stepmother of David, Daniel, James, and Adam Simon, and the pack leader for Marigold Simon, their golden retriever. She loves to sail, skis in the winter, travels, sews, knits, paints, and delights in the seasonal changes in Central Park.

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