Simon J. Li is a New Zealand composer known for his colorful, harmony-rich music and distinctive sound. His work delves into the subtle nuances of emotion, and he enjoys crafting music that explores life’s uncertainties and serves characters’ more complex feelings.
He has worked on the music teams for the Academy Award-nominated films May December (starring Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore) and Flamin’ Hot (dir. Eva Longoria), and acclaimed films and TV shows such as Equalizer 3 (starring Denzel Washington), Emancipation (starring Will Smith), and American Gigolo (starring Jon Bernthal).
Passionate about collaboration and musical storytelling, he has written music for several short and feature-length films, including the 2024 feature film Down Town (dir. Gavin Gaitan) which won the festival award for Best Feature Film at the 2024 Sherman Oaks Film Festival and Best Original Score at the 2025 Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival. Simon has also composed several works for the concert stage, with his latest orchestral piece, Variations on a Raindrop, premiering with the Royal Bangkok Symphony Orchestra in July 2023.
In addition to his composing work, Simon excels as an orchestrator, providing orchestrations and arrangements for projects such as singer CLAUDIA’s album Love, Again, pop artist Milky Day’s EP Impulses, and the 2023 documentary The City of Dried Fountains.
Simon’s extensive experience includes working as a music assistant for the Broadway musical Once Upon a One More Time, as a recording and mixing engineer at the Logan Center for the Arts, and as a studio intern at the Chicago Recording Company.
He holds a Master’s degree in Screen Scoring at NYU Steinhardt where he received the prestigious Alan Menken scholarship, and has studied with Emmy-nominated composer Ariel Marx, Chris Hajian, Jamie Lawrence, and Eric V. Hachikian.
Currently based in Los Angeles, he is a proud member of the Society for Composers and Lyricists (SCL), Composers Diversity Collective (CDC), and Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI).
