Simon also became known for his pioneering programming of works for orchestra and narrator for young people, including his own Casey at the Bat and The Tortoise and the Hare.
According to The Washington Post, Simon was a jazz enthusiast in college and found it had a similar "exhilarating improvisational quality" to that of classical music.
[5] Handel scholar Donald Burrows noted that Simon was one of the pioneers in assembling performers to record large scale works such as Solomon.
Their Stories in Music project created and discovered new works for narrator and orchestra and eventually led to their founding the recording label Maestro Classics.
He was also the music director of L'Orchestre des Portes Rouges, a chamber orchestra that performed at the Church of the Resurrection in Manhattan from 2011 to 2013.
[6] The following were all recorded with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Stephen Simon and released on the Maestro Classics label.