Dan deSimone is an active American performer and composer currently living in Germany. Dan was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania - a suburb of Philadelphia in the United States. After a few years of drumming on his own chest, he began taking drumset lessons at the age of 12 and developed a serious connection with the sound of the instrument. Dan recieved his Bachelor in percussion performance from Temple University under Phil O`Banion and Chris Deviney and a Master in contemporary performance from the Boston Conservatory under Sam Solomon, Nancy Zeltsman and Doug Perkins. At the conservatory, he was a featured soloist in the school`s New Music Festival with the New England premier of Mark Applebaum`s “Composition Machine No. 1” and at the end of his first year, he began working with percussionist Ayami Okamura at the conservatory. They founded “SHIKI” in May of 2015 with their début concert at the conservatory.

Following his studies in Boston, his duo has a brought him around the globe to perform in Japan, and the in the Fall of 2016, he was flown to the Netherlands to compete in the TROMP Percussion Competition in Eindhoven where he won 2nd Prize and the Audience Award for his unique performance style. Since this time, Dan has revisited Japan as a featured soloist with Miss Okamura`s quartet “Legare Incontro” and has moved to Germany to freelance and continue as a contemporary solo and chamber musician. As an extension of his success in the Netherlands, Dan has begun to perform around Europe and in October of 2018, was invited by percussionists Yi-Ping Yang and Ruwen Yang to participate in the Third IPEA International Percussion Competition in Shanghai, China as a guest artist and Jury member alongside several other world-class percussionists. Dan also performed as “Shiki” in the Sambour Autumn Music Festival as a part of world renowned marimba soloist and percussive artist Ivana Bilic`s upcoming “Ivana Bilic Marimba Week (IBMW)” in the summer of 2019 in Croatia. In the winter of 2019 Dan won the first prize for percussion in the Hochschule für Musik Detmold Interpretation among other instrumentalists. More recently, Dan started in 2019 as a member of the Percussion Collective Detmold, which frequently performs in the Lippe district and is a member of the Berlin-based contemporary ensemble Schwelbrand.

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