At the age of 9, he entered the Bay Area's musical scene and began living his dream of becoming a world-class musician.
After studying with Max Rudolf at the Curtis Institute of Music 1970–1973,[1] he was assistant conductor with the San Francisco Opera from 1972 to 1975, winning the Kurt Herbert Adler Award.
[3] He collaborated with the British director Jonathan Miller on a celebrated production of Mozart's Così fan tutte at the Opera Theater of St. Louis (USA) shortly before his death.
He remained active at the San Francisco Opera for all his adult life, supporting General Director Kurt Herbert Adler, first as a repetiteur and then as a member of the conducting staff.
The short story "Addio San Francisco", which appears in the anthology Murder at the Opera (Mysterious Press, 1989), was written by Simmons with editor Thomas Godfrey, under a pseudonym.
[2] After a large public funeral at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, he was buried in Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, California.