Kristin Simpson is a composer, orchestrator, arranger, sound designer and violinist based in the Los Angeles area. She holds a Bachelor of Music in Commercial and Media Composition from California State University, Northridge, where she studied with composer and conductor Elizabeth Sellers.
Simpson writes for a variety of musical genres and specializes in orchestral music. Participation in symphony orchestras — as well as her impressions of music from such renowned films as Star Wars and such television series as Downton Abbey — have inspired her arrangements and compositions, each one with an orchestration in mind from conception.
The impactful, storytelling role of music in audiovisual media compelled Simpson at a young age to the gripping techniques employed by composers for media. Simpson's scores have been recognized for possessing dynamic musical themes, interwoven throughout what listeners note as feeling like "a journey". Her sound design work ranges from that of short films to Doctor Who audio dramas.
Simpson is Music Director and Conductor of Enharmonic Strings, an affiliate of the CYSO Orchestras. She is Assistant of both the Claremont Youth Symphony Orchestra and the Prelude Symphonic Ensemble, and she conducted PSE's premiere of her original piece, Summer Skies, in June 2023. In January of the same year, she was gratified to have guest-lectured in the very Film Music History classroom at the University of California, Irvine from which her interest in pursuing film scoring blossomed.
Simpson teaches private media composition and violin lessons at the Claremont Community School of Music. There she has also produced three virtual orchestras for hundreds of musicians of all ages.
Unthinkable - An Abby Johnson Film