Wick

Wick Simmons is a cellist, composer, and performer who defies easy categorization. Trained as a classical cellist and a self-taught electronic artist, he reimagines the cello as a focal point within the visceral, ritual, memory and experiential realms of performance, converging with music, eroticism, endurance, artwork and trippy visuals.

His bold array of original work has been presented at venues across Europe and the United States, among them PLEX Athens, House of Blues Chicago for International Mister Leather, The Tank in New York City, an unmarked wartime bunker in East Berlin, The Owl Music Parlor, and Maison de l’Amérique Latine for Paris Fashion Week.

He has performed at The Kennedy Center, The Dolby, MASS MoCA, The Kitchen, Constellation Chicago, The Greene Space, and Carnegie Hall. He performed a solo work at Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater in New York for the Anthony Quinn Foundation’s award ceremony honoring Lin Manuel-Miranda. In 2021-22, he played the cellist role in the first Broadway National Tour of the 10 Tony Award-winning show “The Band’s Visit.” He has appeared on NPR’s From The Top, The Cello Sherpa Podcast, and Second Inversion (Classical KING FM). 

Wick’s collaborative work stretches across performance art, contemporary composition, experimental theater, nightlife, and extreme body-based practice. He has worked with renowned American performance artist Ron Athey; composers Conrad Tao, Chinary Ung, and inti figgis-vizueta; media artist Laurie Olinder; Dutch Kills Theater Company; queer party producer CircuitMOM, and folks in hook-suspension, Shibari, and sex worker communities. In 2023 he scored cello music for GRAMMY-winning vocalist Zachary James’ album Song of Myself, listed “the classical project of the year” by Daily Music Spin.

Wick began studying the cello at the age of 9, and became a student of Professor Hans Jørgen Jensen in 2012. He later pursued private studies with hybrid-musician Todd Reynolds and cellist Jeff Ziegler from the Kronos Quartet. He is a prizewinner of the Yamaha Young Performing Artists Competition and an Anthony Quinn Foundation Fellow. He has since served as a recurring judge for the Foundation’s national competition and as a panelist for The Hambidge Center. Wick has also led workshops on Sound in Performance Practice at Ron Athey’s Darkness Visible II workshop in Athens, and on Creativity in Composition at The Longy School of Music at Bard College.

He performs on a Marten Cornelissen cello formerly owned by Bernard Greenhouse, and on a sculptural instrument by South African maker Murray Kuun.