photo credit: Alex Tran

email: simon[at]oc[dot]ca

Named one of CBC Music’s 2022 “30 Hot Canadian Classical Musicians Under 30,” Simon Proulx is a clarinetist based in Montreal originally hailing from Winnipeg. He is completing a Master of Music in Performance at McGill University under Jean-François Normand and Dr. Simon Aldrich, and is the only music student among the 2025 cohort of McCall McBain Scholars at McGill — a fully funded master’s scholarship offering leadership development and community engagement opportunities.

He has participated in summer festivals including the 2022 National Youth Band of Canada and the Interplay Chamber Music and Opera Program at the Banff Centre for the Arts (2024). At the latter, he was selected alongside two other participants to represent the Banff Centre in chamber music recitals at the Music in Pyeongchang Festival in South Korea. His competition accolades include a semi-finalist placement in the Women’s Musical Club of Winnipeg’s McLellan Competition for Solo Performance with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, as well as two wins at the WMC’s Scholarship Competitions (2021, 2025).

Simon completed a Bachelor of Music in Performance and French Language, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver), studying clarinet with José Franch-Ballester. He received the UBC Medal of Music and the David E. Highnam Memorial Prize for achieving the highest averages in the Bachelor of Music and French Literature programs, respectively.

Outside of performance, Simon has a strong interest in historical musicology, particularly the music of the Greek and Francophone worlds. He presented research on 20th-century Greek popular music at the 2024 Pacific Northwest Chapter Conference of the American Musicology Society and was awarded the UBC Undergraduate Musicology Prize later that year.

A committed advocate for music education access, Simon helped develop the Vancouver Opera’s inaugural Orchestral Mentorship Program and currently volunteers with the Coalition for Music Education in Canada, where he also worked as a summer student in 2021.

Simon envisions a career at the intersection of performance, research, and advocacy. Outside of music, he is a voracious reader, a birdwatcher, and an enthusiastic language learner.

Simon is based in Tio’tia:ke (Montréal) on the traditional lands of the Kanien:keha’ka of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and recognizes the enduring presence of the First Peoples.