Bekah Simms

Bekah Simms
Competition: US & Canada
JUNO award-winning composer Bekah Simms hails from St. John’s, Newfoundland and is currently based in Glasgow after nine years living and working in Toronto. Her varied musical output has been heralded as “cacophonous, jarring, oppressive — and totally engrossing!” (CBC Music), “visceral contemporary music that enfolds external inspirations with dazzling rigor and logic” (Peter Margasak), and lauded for its “sheer range of ingenious material, expressive range and sonic complexity” (The Journal of Music.) Bekah’s music has been widely performed across the Americas and Europe. She has worked with some of the top interpreters of contemporary music internationally, including Crash Ensemble – with whom she is currently an artist-in-residence – Riot Ensemble, Quatuor Bozzini, Eighth Blackbird, and l’Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal. Bekah has also been the recipient of over 40 awards, competitive selections, nominations, and prizes, including a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2019 Barlow Prize, and the 2023 JUNO Award for Classical Composition of the Year. Her chamber orchestra + electronics album “Bestiaries” was released in 2022 to critical acclaim and was included on several year end best-of lists from the US, Canada, the UK, and Italy. Bekah is a Lecturer in Composition at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.