Mark Simos is an acclaimed songwriter, composer and tunesmith, accompanist, teacher and author, described by the late Mick Moloney as “… a musician’s musician, versed in many musical idioms, excelling at all of them… one of the few musicians I know equally at home in the often incompatible roles of traditionalist and innovator.”
A veteran guitar accompanist for traditional Celtic music, Mark recorded with early bands Knock Na Shee and Fresh Takes, and later with renowned players including Brian Conway, April Verch, Fintan Vallely, and Tim Britton among others. Mark’s hundreds of song and instrumental covers include recordings by Grammy-winning artists Alison Krauss, Molly Tuttle, and Del McCoury, and by artists ranging from the Infamous Stringdusters to Australian rock icon Jimmy Barnes.
In his two decades at Berklee College of Music, Mark created innovative pedagogy for songwriting, and evolved his shape- and discovery-based Net of Jewels guitar approach (initially developed for accompanists!) into multi-level courses now integrated into Berklee’s Songwriting curriculum. Mark has released four albums of traditional and original fiddle music, and the song cycle album Crazy Faith. He has authored two books for Berklee Press: Songwriting Strategies: A 360º Approach, and Songwriting in Practice: Notebooks, Journals, Logs, Lists.
