Simon Mazalek

Simon Mazalek is a violinist, guitarist, and composer who has been playing and writing music in the Kawarthas since he was twelve. A lifelong resident of the Lindsay area, he is one of the youngest members of the Kawartha Chamber Music Collective and among the most creatively ambitious.

Simon began studying violin at age five and came to composition seven years later, pursuing private lessons in both. He has studied composition with Colin McMahon at the Kawartha Youth Orchestra, where he has been a performing member of the Senior KYO and the KYO Jazz Band for nearly six years. He also performs with the Lakeshore Jazz Youth Orchestra in Port Hope and spends his summers playing with the Brevard Concert Orchestra, a prestigious summer music program that draws young musicians from across North America.

As a composer, Simon has already reached a milestone that many musicians spend years working toward. The world premieres of his first string quartet and clarinet quintet stand as highlights of his young career, and the experience of hearing his own music brought to life by live performers is one he describes as something he will surely remember.

Outside of music, Simon is a high school student with a passion for history, mathematics, and skiing, and a habit of disappearing down musical rabbit holes. He plays on his school's badminton team and brings that same competitive curiosity to everything he takes on.

For Simon, chamber music is a deeply communicative art form, one where musical nuance and emotion meet in a way he finds endlessly compelling. He may be young, but his investment in the form is anything but casual.