Luiz Simas was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He is a composer, singer and pianist, and has performed and recorded with several well-known Brazilian artists. Many of his songs have been recorded in both Brazil and the USA.

Living in New York since 1989, he has performed as a solo singer/pianist, as well as with his own group and several Brazilian and American groups in many different places, such as the Brooklyn Conservatory, the Greenwich House Music School, Rutgers University, SOB's, the Village Gate, The Spanish Institute, Cafe Wha?, The Ballroom, Hotel Plaza Athénée, The Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in New York, Roger Williams University (in Bristol, Rhode Island), the Mirage Hotel (in Las Vegas), the Rocky Mountain Ragtime Festival (in Boulder, Colorado) and also in Jamaica, the British Virgin Islands and Trinidad (Trinidad and Tobago).

Luiz's style is influenced by classical music, jazz, bossa nova, and Brazilian popular, traditional, and modern music. His repertoire includes his "chorinhos" and other compositions for solo piano. The chorinho genre has some similarities with ragtime, and at the Rocky Mountain Ragtime Festival (when he was announced as a "sensational pianist from Brazil") Luiz performed a great example of the close relationship existing among all styles of piano music in the Americas.

In November 2000 Luiz performed at the II International Chopin and Friends Festival at the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in New York, playing his original compositions in the chorinho style.

Many of his pieces have been chosen by the Central New Jersey Piano Teachers Forum, an association of 100 piano teachers, to be included in their syllabus for 2002.

 

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