Christy Simpson

Christina Simpson is a professional violist, recruiter, educator, and the founder of Wave Chamber Collective. She has brought music to communities for over ten years of professional performing throughout California, including with the Modesto, Merced, Stockton, Oakland, and Berkeley Symphonies, Island City Opera, and others. Christina is an active chamber musician and has performed over forty chamber music house concerts in the Bay Area with Groupmuse, has participated in the St. Lawrence String Seminar at Stanford, and premiered new chamber music at Festival Napa Valley. She is a frequent performer with the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival and has toured through Northern California and Oregon with members of the festival. She has performed for the SF Friends of Chamber Music series, Noon Concerts at UC Berkeley, with the Benicia Chamber Players, and has performed with SF Contemporary Music Players, Hidden Valley String Orchestra, Elevate Ensemble, and One Found Sound.

She has enjoyed collaborating with non-classical artists as well, including a run at Yoshi’s with Grammy-nominated R&B band Tony! Toni! Tone!, as well as touring with Grammy-nominated electronic music duo, Odesza, and performing with Magik*Magik Orchestra at Davies Symphony Hall for Grammy-winning jazz singer Gregory Porter. She has recorded with various artists at Fantasy Studios, 25th Street Studio, Tiny Telephone Studios, ZooLabs, and Soundwave Studios.

Christina grew up in a village in Sonoma County as a fifth generation Northern Californian. Hearing her family’s stories of the past, the layers of history and meaning-making lead her to study History of the American West at UC Berkeley for her undergraduate degree. Her thesis focused on competing visions for Richmond, CA after WWII and housing discrimination. She used her research to create interactive workshops for local schools and community centers and through an internship at the Richmond Museum of History, was part of the curation and opening of the Rosie the Riveter Museum.

As an educator, she has worked both in the classroom teaching high school American History at San Francisco High School of the Arts and Freshman English at Pinole Valley High during the pandemic. She has also participated in music outreach programs with the San Francisco Symphony’s AIM program and Berkeley Symphony’s Education in Schools program.

Her most recent project, Wave Chamber Collective, combines small chamber ensembles with other art forms building a collaborative language of co-creation between artists, musicians, and audiences. The project seeks to fairly compensate musicians and artists for making art by building a strong audience base and through private donations. Their last seven performances have played to sold out audiences through San Francisco, with more exciting collaborations planned through the summer and fall, including working with a popular live drawing workshop featuring trans and non-binary bodies, and a collaboration with Habitaat, a ecologically focused SF-based DJ who has been featured at Red Rocks Amphitheater.

Christina is driven by a desire to understand and uplift people through storytelling, music, and community building. She has spent significant time over the last five years in Trinity County, performing, building, watching animals, learning poker at the local bar and playing Bach for a porch of old-timers and patrons. For her, music is the great connector, the best way to open to each other and the world around us. She has seen it change hearts and shift realities and believes it can make the seemingly impossible, real.