In a very sad development, Carly Simon She lost her sister this week, with Broadway composer Lucy Simon Thursday celebrated breast cancer and former opera singer Joanna Simon of thyroid cancer on Wednesday.
A source close to pop star Carly confirmed the two deaths. Lucy Simone was 82 years old, and Joanna Simone 84 years old.
Born into the wealth and rare celebrity atmosphere of Simon & Schuster publisher Richard Simon and his wife Andrea, the Simon sisters – whose younger brother was Peter – will all find their ways to succeed in professional music careers.
Lucy got into the show business in the early 1960s when she and Carly formed the popular singing duo The Simon Sisters, performing in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Greenwich Village in New York City. In 1964, the sisters recorded and released the song “Wynken, Blynken & Nod” to moderate success.
Within 10 years, Carly Simon became one of the most successful and commercially viable pop music of the era’s singer-songwriters, with hits including “That The Way II Heard It Should Be” and “Expectation” in 1971, and the following in year, her signature tune “You So Vain,” which remains on the pop radio classic and as a topic of discussion about the mystery man in the lyrics.
Lucy Simon, although attending nursing school in the late 1960s, would go on to pursue a musical career, albeit less well known than her younger sister. In 1975 she recorded the album Lucy Simon And in 1977 stolen timethe latter featuring backup vocals by Carly and her then-husband James Taylor on about half of the songs.
In the early 1980s, Simon and her husband David Levine produced two Grammy Awards-winning children’s albums: In Harmony: Sesame Street Record In 1981 and harmony 2 in 1983.
Lucy’s amazing success came in 1991 when she worked as a composer for the Broadway musical secret Garden, received a Tony Award nomination for Best Original Score. The acclaimed production will go on to win a Tonys for books, stunning design and outstanding performance by young Daisy Eagan. The cast also included Mandy Patinkin, Rebecca Locker, Robert Westenberg, and John Cameron Mitchell.
Follow success secret GardenSimon composed the music for the adaptation Doctor Zhivagowhich debuted at San Diego’s La Jolla Playhouse in 2006. The musical took a brief stint on Broadway in 2015.
In 1993, Lucy Simon wrote and produced the music for the HBO film The Positive True Adventures of an Alleged Murderous Cheerleader Texas Mother.
Prior to the development of her illness, Lucy had been working with Susan Birkenhead and Emily Maan On Cedar StreetMusical adaptation of the 2015 novel Our souls at night and a 2017 Netflix movie. The project is ongoing.
Joanna Simone has performed regularly on opera and concert stages since 1962, when she debuted at the New York City Opera as Cherubino Mozart, until 1986. She starred in the world premiere of Thomas Pastieri. Black Widow at the Seattle Opera in 1972, and has made numerous recordings with the orchestra over the years, including performances with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Vienna Orchestra, and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
After semi-retired from music in 1986, Joanna Simon worked as an arts reporter for PBS MacNeil-Lehrer News Clock Until 1992, she won a 1991 Emmy for her reporting on bipolar disorder and creativity. In subsequent years, she worked in real estate.
Joanna Simon was married to novelist and journalist Gerald Walker from 1976 until his death in 2004, and was the companion of journalist Walter Cronkite from 2005 until his death in 2009.
Lucy and Joanna Simon were passed away by their photographer brother Peter Simon, who died of cardiac arrest at the age of 71 in 2018 after battling cancer.