Morrison, Simon Alexander, 1964-

Simon Morrison is a scholar and writer specializing in 20th-century music, particularly Russian, Soviet, and French music, with special interests in dance, cinema, aesthetics, and historically informed performance based on primary sources. He has conducted archival research in St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Paris, London, New York, Washington D.C., Copenhagen, Los Angeles, and extensively in Moscow. He has traveled to Tel Aviv, Beijing, Hong Kong, Montreal, Moscow, Copenhagen, Bangkok, Tokyo, and elsewhere to give invited lectures and graduate seminars. He divides his time between Princeton and Los Angeles. Morrison is the author of Tchaikovsky's Empire (Yale University Press, 2024), named by the Financial Times as one of the "Best Books of the Year," Mirror in the Sky: The Life and Music of Stevie Nicks (California, 2022), Roxy Music's Avalon (Bloomsbury, 2021), Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement (California, 2002, 2019), Bolshoi Confidential: Secrets of the Russian Ballet from the Tsars to Today (W.W. Norton, 2016), The Love and Wars of Lina Prokofiev (Houghton, 2013), and The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years (Oxford, 2009) as well as editor of Prokofiev and His World (Princeton, 2008) and, with Klara Moricz, Funeral Games: In Honor of Arthur Vincent Lourié (Oxford, 2014). His history of Moscow (tentatively titled Moskva) is to be published by Knopf in spring 2026. He is currently at work on a study of Shostakovich to be published by Norton. Morrison also maintains a profile as a public intellectual by continuing to write books and feature articles, assisting in ballet and theatre productions, and giving interviews and lectures in his areas of expertise, especially for the 92nd Street Y in New York.