By Invitation: Michael Simon: Composing Rooms

The acclaimed interior designer visits the ICAA's podcast for a conversation about music, craft, and creativity

By Invitation features discussions by architects, designers, garden professionals, urbanists, craftspeople, and luminaries in the classical design field about the relevance of the classical tradition in today's modern world.

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Michael Simon: Composing Rooms

In this episode of By Invitation, host Caroline Slaten sits down with acclaimed interior designer Michael Simon to explore the unexpected connection between composing music and composing a room. A pianist from the age of three, Michael trained as a composer under the legendary Stephen Sondheim, ultimately shaping not only the way he understands music, but the way he approaches interiors.

Michael reflects on Sondheim’s profound influence as a mentor and on the idea that great design, like great music or theater, has the power to alter our perception of time and space and transport us somewhere entirely different. Along the way, Michael discusses the allure of French antiques, narrative in the decorative arts, his work as a furniture designer and collector, and the importance of craftsmanship.

Michael Simon is a New York-based interior designer, furniture creator, and collector who began his career in the world of music. His design philosophy is deeply informed by his musical background, emphasizing composition fundamentals such as line, balance, harmony, rhythm, counterpoint and orchestration.

Episode Transcript

Michael Simon: 00:02

I would say because my formal education is in music, and because the theater, and particularly the theater of Stephen Sondheim, was my initial love, there's a very specific narrative. And I think in design, there's also a great narrative. And I believe firmly in both music and in architecture, interior design, decorative arts, that there is time and space, and psychological time and psychological space. How it is that if you go to a concert, for example, time stops, and you can be transported by what you are hearing. And I think the same thing happens in certain circumstances in architecture and design.

Caroline Slaten: 00:55

Welcome to "By Invitation," a podcast of the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art, where we're dedicated to advancing the understanding, appreciation, and practice of classical design. I'm your host, Caroline Slaten, and in each episode we'll explore the people, places, and ideas shaping the world of classical design. Today's visit is a study of balance, harmony, and rhythm. I'm so happy to be joined by Michael Simon, whose design philosophy is deeply informed by his musical background. Trained as a composer under the legendary Stephen Sondheim, Michael started playing piano at just three years old. We will be chatting about composing rooms, the allure of French antiques, and how Michael found a craftsperson in the most unlikely of spots. And by invitation, here is today's guest, Michael Simon. Michael Simon is an acclaimed New York-based interior designer, furniture creator, and collector who began his career in the world of music. His design philosophy is deeply informed by his musical background, emphasizing composition fundamentals such as line, balance, harmony, rhythm, counterpoint, and orchestration, which he likens to composing rooms.

Michael Simon: 02:44

As a youngster, I was very passionate about two things. One of them had to do with music for the theater, and the other had to do with set design for the theater. I have a sister who is two and a half years older than I am, and my grandparents purchased a piano for her. And the day it was delivered, I was intrigued, and I went, sat down, and started picking out melodies. And my sister wanted nothing to do with it. My parents hired piano teachers for me, and I went through them very, very quickly. And these teachers were working with children. And I was just more advanced than what they were used to working with. And I had a very, very good ear, and I could play anything that I heard. So I would say to the teacher, "Well, give me a sense of what this thing sounds like." They would do it, and I would sit down and I could just play it in a heartbeat. And my reading skills actually suffered as a result of that because I was so adept at imitating what I could hear. I studied privately with Stephen Sondheim from age 15 to 20. And over the course of five years and many visits with him, on one of my visits, he had what was called "Company." And there was an opening number, and I took the entire thing down, and it had the whole cast in it, et cetera. I wrote all the vocal parts down, and I wrote what you would call the piano conductor score. And I brought it to him, and he was somewhat gobsmacked because the score had not been published as yet. That would come six months, maybe a year later. And so I had a good ear, and I was a passionate and engaged student.

Caroline Slaten: 04:40

What was that like working under him?

Michael Simon: 04:42

I have to tell you that I think in life, if a person, a youngster, has one mentor, one person, whether it's a teacher, whether it is like a demi-god as he was to me, or the like, you're extremely lucky. And I will say that if I'm a competent interior designer, it is completely because Stephen Sondheim taught me how to write music, taught me how to understand something so abstract and think of it in a very concrete way. And my process as a designer is absolutely the process that he taught me as a composer.

Caroline Slaten: 05:27

And can you kind of explain how learning music translates into design?

Michael Simon: 05:35

So composers are working in a pretty abstract realm, and the auditor, the listener, whether it's something that is concert music or popular music or what have you, they need to catch on to whatever it is that the composer is selling. And there are touch points that in music would be called leitmotifs that are little hooks. I refer to them as cells in design or markers in design. And these are things that the ear identifies and the composer manipulates it and if the composer, in my view, is a good one, as there have been so many genius composers in the concert world they are very economic with their material and they manipulate these very economically conceived cells as in the case of Beethoven's Fifth, ba, ba, ba, bom. Those four notes inform an entire sound universe that he has written over the course of four movements. So in design, what I do is I try to limit myself to a handful of ideas that I am manipulating. So it's not in time and notes, it's in space and volume. If one is careful with it, and it's never obvious, but the idea is that this very limited group of ideas, these cells get expressed in various media. So it could be in a textile, it could be in a piece of furniture, it could be in passementerie even and I try very carefully to stick to these handful of ideas and the average viewer is not at all aware of it, and they shouldn't be, but what happens in my view is that it is very binding, and it's a glue. So if you think, for example, of Robert Adam and you look at his carpet designs, and you look at his reflected ceilings in plaster, which are literally beamed down onto the carpet and the hardware and details in the furnishings, that's kind of what this is about. In my work, it's a little bit more abstract and not quite as literal, but that gives you an idea how that manifests, at least in my work.

Caroline Slaten: 08:22

You are just absolutely incredibly detail-oriented. I've walked through your projects, and if you're really looking out, every little thing has been carefully thought out, but it all works together as a cohesive whole. So how do you reconcile those little minute details with the entire package of a room?

Michael Simon: 08:42

The first thing is that I'm very blessed to have clients that are willing to go down the rabbit hole with me for their projects because almost everything is made for us. The textiles are made for us, the carpets are made for us. I design a lot of the furniture and I engage with a handful of extraordinary artisans who I rely upon for most of our projects to render some of these very complicated ideas that will reflect what it is that I'm trying to execute. And it's been many years with a lot of these people, some of them are Arthur Ross Award recipients and very well deserved. So that is sort of key because if one were to go out shopping in the market, it would be very hard to do what I do, and as I say, it's an extraordinary privilege to be able to create all of this. It takes time. I will also say that there is a marination process. This does not happen overnight, and the clients have been remarkable in their willingness to wait for a project to materialize that can take two years or more. These are big projects. But what happens is like a snowball rolling down a hill, it starts to accumulate more snow, and it develops a life of its own which is for me, one of the most exciting things because it gets to the point where the client might make a suggestion. I'll say, "No, that's too far off base. We really need to honor this cell, and we need to express it, in this case, in three dimensions, or we need to bump up the scale significantly." So for example, some of the tricks in the composer's toolkit are taking a line, let's say, and they can make it vertical, which creates a harmony. They can change the rhythm, which will change it enormously. They can run it backwards. They can do it inside out. They can augment it. They can diminish it. They can run it in counterpoint. All of these things are what I do with our projects.

Caroline Slaten: 11:04

And how do clients respond when you say, "Maybe that's not the right direction. Let's reorient"?

Michael Simon: 11:10

I'm very sensitive to vibrations and I'm very sensitive to rapid eye movement, and I know in a second generally whether what I am proposing makes sense to the client or not. Because in music, in order for something to sing, the frequency, the vibration, the friction has to be spot on. And of course, you have the same theory and logic in color because there isn't one color on its own that isn't magnificent as there isn't one note on its own that isn't magnificent. And notes and color only have meaning when they're juxtaposed to another color or another note. If I am presenting something, I know right away if they either don't like it or they don't get it. And if I'm very invested in something, and very often they don't get it because it's really hard to express so many of these things until you have the entire thing together and there is this gestalt where each little thing may not have any meaning, but when it is fully assembled, they understand it. And I have had clients, this sounds crazy, but one that I'm thinking of right now who has said to me, "Could you do a write-up?" Because when we have guests over, she wants to be like a docent, and she wants to give the tour, and she wants to point out that this particular thing has been augmented to a point that you don't even see what it is. But she understands now that it is this leitmotif. Or I have a fabric woven that is a Jacquard, and it has the notion of a thumbprint. And then I design a commode, and I do that with Nancy Lorenz, and it is in mother of pearl and lacquer and leaf, and that thing gets blown up and augmented, and now it's in different materials. So it takes on a whole new life. And I would say because my formal education is in music and because theater, and particularly the theater of Stephen Sondheim, was my initial love, there's a very specific narrative. And I think in design, there's also a great narrative. And I believe firmly in both music and in architecture, interior design, decorative arts, that there is time and space and psychological time and psychological space. How it is that if you go to a concert, for example, time stops, and you can be transported by what you are hearing. And I think the same thing happens in certain circumstances in architecture and design. Think, for example, when you go to a church. You modify your voice, and you are in a space that is speaking to you. And what's going on outside, what's going on in your life, changes thoroughly. And the same thing happens in a museum. And I would like to say in our projects that though there is so much detail, nothing is noisy. Nothing is in your face. And I like for these spaces to appear to be inevitable. And to do that and to make it look inevitable is a challenge.

Caroline Slaten: 15:07

And it's interesting you said every space does tell a story. What kind of story do you want someone to hear when they walk into your project?

Michael Simon: 15:16

Well, I think spaces, there's a procession, and you have a procession in music also. If you think of a project as a perfect flower that has petals, and I don't like to reveal the whole enchilada at the front door. And I believe that you don't get a second chance to make a first impression. I want to be very, very careful about how I stage that procession. And it's very funny because in "The Decoration of Houses" by Edith Wharton, she talks a lot, this was not her idea, this is an 18th century concept, that somebody comes to a residence, and there are these series of steps that you have to go through before you get to the boudoir, for example. So you may be in an entry that is limestone and bronze, and it's very sober. Très sobre. It isn't until more is revealed as you keep going that the essence of the project reveals itself.

Caroline Slaten: 16:29

Now, you just dropped a little French in there, which brings me to a question I have. You're a true connoisseur and I believe a collector of French antiquities. Is that right?

Michael Simon: 16:38

Yeah, I'm very invested in the French, and I am particularly invested in the 18th century in France, whether it's architecture, whether it's decorative arts, and I'm very invested in France in the 1920s and '30s. And what is so interesting to me is that I think of Louis Quatorze, Louis XIV, as the original nouveau riche client, and I think of Versailles as the first decorator show house. He understood on some very intense level that if he presented a front that was extraordinary and like nothing else that had ever been seen, that people would assume that he was a genius and that he was doing something that few others had done. We have Louis XIV to thank in many ways for the extraordinary savoir faire that so many makers and guild members worked around the clock, whether it was sculpting plaster, wood, stone, bronze, Jacquard looms, all of these things. And interestingly, when you look at the 18th century, where the output was robust and at the same time exceptionally refined and glittering because they didn't have electric lamps, everything had to be reflected, whether it was mirror, whether it was gilding. And you fast-forward to the first quarter of the 20th century. And when these people are working, and I'm talking about the Ruhlmanns and that whole group of artisans, this is after World War I, so now materials are not in abundance, but they so brilliantly learned all the lessons from the 18th century but stripped it down and reduced it, and it's incredibly refined, but it becomes something different. And in my personal process, I generally am looking at things through three lenses, the 18th century, the first quarter of the 20th century, and my current time. And I am very invested in understanding zeitgeist and understanding what makes something classic and what differentiates that particular component that it survives, that it sticks and doesn't go by the wayside in the way that fads can do. So I try to be very mindful of that and learn as many lessons as I can from the past. And also because what we work in is so expansive that I don't want to do anything that isn't going to be lasting. And in the 18th century, so many of the makers, for purposes of taxation, had to brand their pieces. I don't do it for that, but I do it because in 100 years, if somebody is looking at this and they might say, "Oh, who was Michael Simon?" And it has its own legacy of sorts.

Caroline Slaten: 20:30

And that kind of brings me to my next topic was that you are such a prolific designer of furniture as well as interiors. So can you talk a little bit about that process? How do you go about developing a new piece?

Michael Simon: 20:33

I love technology, and a lot of it has to do with my understanding of ever-evolving technology. And I also, as I mentioned earlier, that I work with a handful of artisans and have done for many years. So it's a combination of my coming up to speed on new technology, on new materials, and parsing out whether these artisans with whom I'm working have the headset to navigate and try these things out with me. And some of them have a greater ability to do that than others. It's also a question of how much I can express in a drawing. And for the furniture, we do full-scale drawings because the details are really complicated, and the engineering is really complicated. But I have to make sure whatever it is that from an ergonomic perspective, it makes perfect sense. If it's a chair, is somebody going to be comfortable in it? And to give you an example, I just did a suite of dining chairs for a client, and I was thinking to myself, "Why doesn't anybody use bronze mounts on seating furniture?" And I wanted to do it. And so I designed a chair, and we did a mock-up of it. We always do mock-ups, particularly where seating is concerned. And if I'm iffy on it, I will make sure that the client sits in it, because the husband may be tall, the wife may be petite, and everybody's got to be comfortable in these things. So we want to hash that out, work that out in the very beginning. In this particular case, I went to a great ceramicist, Eve Kaplan, with whom I've done business over the years. And I said to her, "Would you consider making in wax mounts for these dining chairs?" So there would be sabots, there would be chutes, and a variety of other little elements that we used. And she said, "Well, that kind of sounds fun. I'm used to working in clay." And I said, "You've got to do it in wax because I'm going to have to take it to be cast by a jeweler for the quality that I'm looking for." So she did it, and she did a brilliant job of it, and it almost feels as if this chair has met Jean Cocteau. It just has this movement and life to it that I adore. I'll give you another example, a cocktail table that I designed in a project where there is the idea it's on the ocean, and there's this sort of wave motif that permeates through every conceivable medium one could imagine. And I went to a motorcycle shop and I said, "Is there anybody here who knows how to bend tubular metal?" And someone raised his hand, and we had a conversation, and I did a little sketch, and the guy was intrigued. Nine months later, he produced the most extraordinary thing. And the carpet has this same kind of movement in it, and it almost looks as if this wave has come out of the carpet and into life on this base for this cocktail table. I am not lazy, and I will go to extraordinary means to try and make something happen if I can do that. And what a privilege to meet new people on a regular basis who themselves have extraordinary voices and to make music together as it were.

Caroline Slaten: 24:28

You've touched on this, working with craftspeople and artisans. What's the collaboration like there? Who leads with the artistic intent and the design?

Michael Simon: 24:36

I'm going to give you an example. I've done work with Miriam Ellner, the great églomiseuse, for decades. And when I first started working with her, I was a pasticheur. I was a copyist because I didn't have an education in design, and I did amass a significant library, thousands of books, and I read them. I looked at the photos, but I read them. And the library consisted of books that had to do with architecture primarily in the decorative arts, focused primarily on the 18th century in France, England, Italy, Russia, and Germany. And so when I started working, I would always refer to my books, and I copied. And it wasn't until I started to feel that I really understood what these great designers and makers were doing back in the 18th century that I thought, "Okay, I have some sense of how this is done and what they were thinking about." And so in the case of Miriam Ellner, because I love working with her and I love what she does, I would say, "All right. I'm going to propose thus and such." And I have a very greedy eye, as I had a very greedy ear, and I'm very invested in backgrounds. And over time, with Miriam, I started challenging her about the materials that we were working in, because up until this particular project that I'm thinking of, she was working on clear glass and I said, "Well, what happens if we get molded glass?" Because I'm doing something in limestone for this project, and I selected six different types of limestone from different parts of the world that had different characteristics. Some of them were tessellated, some of them were fossilized, some of them were pitted. And so I went to a variety of different glass companies, and I looked to see if I could find molded glass that had those identical characteristics, and I was successful in finding them. So I said to her, "Okay, let's run these in the same geometries for a chimney breast, and that I have on this wall that is outside and inside the property in limestone. And let's do it in leaf and Japan paints and precious metals, et cetera." And she just was off to the races. And it not only changed the way I thought about things, but it really changed the way she thought about things. And so over and over again in that collaboration, I push her and she pushes me, and it's just a ball. And I do that with a lot of the people that I work with. I'll say one other thing. My favorite activity in composing was orchestrating. And I was slow at it, but I was good at it. And to the point about the 18th century and the first quarter of the 20th century, when you look at an orchestra in the 18th century, particularly a Germanic, an Austrian orchestra, they are made up of winds, brass, strings, and timpani. That's about it. And juxtapose that to what's going on in Versailles, which is as opulent and orchestral. Fast-forward after the First World War and listen to what the French composers and the Russian composers in particular are doing. So I'm talking about a little bit earlier, but if you listen to Tchaikovsky, if you listen to Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, or in France, if you're listening to Ravel or Debussy or Poulenc, the color is extraordinary, and they have introduced new instruments that didn't exist. Mahler wrote a symphony, the so-called Symphony of a Thousand, and between the chorus and the orchestra, there are 1,000 people on the stage, including four to six harps. So that expression of color, which is manifest in all of these different instruments, is something that is ever-present with me when I'm designing, because I'm looking for depth of color and I'm looking for how does something reflect, and I have a dressy aesthetic. So how do we put these things together? How do I take one thing, one design, and take the same design but revoice the motif in embroidery, for example, so that what was pale in the Jacquard woven thing is now dark. And it has a completely different life. You can look at it and never know that it's the same thing, but it's identical.

Caroline Slaten: 29:58

Michael, you've been such a great friend to the ICAA. Tell us what about this organization speaks to you.

Michael Simon: 30:05

We started this conversation speaking of mentorship, and I think that because the ICAA is all about classicism, by design, the organization must mentor younger people and bring them into the fold and expose them to a subject, a universe, not a subject, a universe that they might not otherwise be exposed to. And so what the Institute stands for resonates in a huge way. And also, it's a lot about beauty and understanding beauty. And I believe that beauty is a balm and that beauty is not insignificant. And I think that we live in a world and in a culture where beauty is minimized. And if you just think about the National Endowment for the Arts and you think about funding for so many things that make us better people and contribute enormously to culture at large, anything that is invested in the best of the past and exposing the youngest and the brightest of our time is, I think, critical and not incidental. And I think by dint of the fact that the Institute has such a vast array of programs and chapters and great designers and architects and landscape people and also those people who support it and write about it, I think it's critical. I'm very invested in it.

Caroline Slaten: 32:02

And you work with so many other ICAA members, and as you spoke about with people that have won the Arthur Ross Award and other awards, how would you describe the community?

Michael Simon: 32:13

It is a community that is very responsible for maintaining standards and exposing great thinking from the past and the present to a wide audience. I think it's a very generous group of people. I think that the organization itself, yourself included, are very generous people who stay awake at all hours trying to think of ways to reach farther afield to get a new audience and to engage those people who are members and invested here and exposing them, whether it's through trips, whether it's through lectures, whether it's through classes. I think that the members are extremely generous, and I think the staff is very generous, and there is an underlying need. I think everybody understands that on a very visceral level. I think that the Institute is a great example for other arts organizations on how to build an audience and how to expose them to the best of the best and encourage them in their own practices to stretch and reach and be the new guard for the great classic work that we all admire so.

Caroline Slaten: 33:54

And you've had a very interesting client recently, which was yourself. So what was it like designing your own project, and how do you navigate having your own self as a client?

Michael Simon: 34:06

Caroline, that's a great question, and I can tell you unequivocally that the project that I completed was the most joyous thing that I have ever done in my life. Because I'm intuitive and because I'm sensitive, rather, to the environment, I had an idea early on what I wanted to do, and I wanted to do something that the shell was somewhat modern, but everything in it, sort of the spring point, is 1920s to today. All the great people with whom I work twisted themselves into pretzels to try to participate and deliver for me, and to do it, I'm sure, at a great loss for themselves. But they did, and still it was a fortune for me. But it's really the most enjoyable thing that I've ever done in my life, and I'm very proud of it. And when I look at it next to some of my projects, my client projects, I think it stands up in a very nice way. I think that in some respect, it's some of my, dare I say, best work. It's been a thrill. There are many designers who say, "Well, the project takes on a life of its own." Mario Buatta used to speak famously about a project being like a garden. That's not the way I do it. Everything is very intentional, very specific. The fiber optic lighting in the ceiling is never moving because I care so much about enfilade and vistas, and I don't want anyone who is a visitor to not always be looking at something beautiful. And I made the contractors, who in upstate New York are not used to doing the kind of work that the contractors here and in other parts of the world and this country are used to be doing, and they did a pretty good job, I will say. But they came to understand over time that if you are in the dining room and you are seated with your back to this very lovely view, you're going to be looking at something that is exceptional and exceptional by intention.

Caroline Slaten: 36:32

Tell us what's next for you.

Michael Simon: 36:34

I think all the time about writing a book because my book would be very different, and while it would have photographs, I think the content could be very strong. My idea is that each chapter would have a heading that is something that's in a composer's toolkit. So you would have line, melody, rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, orchestration, and so on and so forth. There would be a very quick example in music of what that means to a composer, and then the chapter would show and describe how that gets executed in my work. I have a particular book on interior design that is by far my favorite, and it is by the late, great Renzo Mongiardino, who himself started life out as a theater and opera set designer. His approach was, as far as I'm concerned, fairly unique, and he would get into the universe, for example, of an object. It could be a porcelain teapot, and it might be from the early 19th century, and there might be a motif on it that informs many of the decisions that he made. And the taste was quite Italian and stunning. My taste leans much more to the French, and it is a little bit lighter. But his process could not have been - or I should say, my process, I have a feeling, has similarities to Mongiardino's process. Very intellectual perspective, so much about craft, so much about manipulation of material and objects, and he had a remarkable clientele. It was a who's who of great clients who were highly invested in Mongiardino himself. I always believe that the best clients are those who do not micromanage but express what it is that they want out of a residence. And I'm thinking right now about a beloved client for whom I worked several times in Minneapolis and then in Arizona, and we would speak almost completely about how they were going to live, how they would entertain, how their guests would feel in the space. And there was never any conversation about, "I don't like this color," or, "This doesn't appeal to me." And they understood that if they wound me up and let me go, and I respected thoroughly what it was that they wanted from an experiential perspective, that they would be the winners. And thank goodness they were very, very pleased. But for me, too, I can look at those projects and I can say, "Yes, this is really successful." And the more controlling a client may be, it's very hard to pull these kinds of things off.

Caroline Slaten: 40:03

Thank you, Michael. It's been such a delight speaking with you and hearing more about your process. Is there anything else you'd like to say before we close up?

Michael Simon: 40:11

Just what a delight, Caroline, it is chatting with you. You make it very easy to have this conversation.

Caroline Slaten: 40:16

Thank you.

Thank you for tuning in to "By Invitation," presented by the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art, an educational non-profit dedicated to advancing the practice, understanding, and appreciation of classical and traditional architecture, art, and design. With 15 chapters across the United States, the ICAA offers programs for students, professionals, and enthusiasts around the world, including continuing education courses, public programs and lectures, travel programs, documentary films, and more. To learn more or to support the ICAA, please visit classicist.org.

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