The musician Carly Simon has lost both of her sisters, Lucy and Joanna, to cancer just a day from one another. Lucy was known throughout her life and profession as composer on Broadway she died from her metastatic cancer of the breast at 82 on Thursday at the comfort of her Piermont, N.Y. home. Joanna was the older of the sisters and was a well-known opera singer, passed away from thyroid cancer at the age of 85 on Wednesday, as reported by The New York Times.
In the course of Lucy Simon’s Broadway career and nominations for an Tony award for Original Score for her work on the production “The Secret Garden.” Before she was able to compose She as well as Carly Simon started out as an folk group performing in Provincetown, Mass. they were known with the name of the Simon Sisters and their rendition of “Wynken Blynken, Nod and Wynken” hit the top spot at No. 70 at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in 1964. In the year 1981 Lucy Simon won a Grammy along with her spouse David Levine in Best Recording for Children for “In Harmony”,” receiving the same award at the time of the sequel to the album.
In the past, Lucy Simon had contributed work for the show “On Cedar Street” which was based on the publication “Our Souls At Night” featuring Victoria Clark directing, but her battle with cancer forced her to quit the production. The couple is still together: husband David and daughter Julie and her ex-husband Christopher Knight, her sister Carly as well as her four grandkids Sophie, Ben, Charlie and Evie.
Joanna Simon started performed regularly on stage for opera and concerts in the year 1962, when she began her career at New York City Opera as Mozart’s Cherubino. The year 1972 saw her sang the title role for the first time in Thomas Pasatieri’s “Black Widow” at the Seattle Opera, while in 1975, she played the part as Pelagia at the premiere world-premiere of Robert Starer’s “The last Lovers” in Caramoor Music Festival. Caramoor Music Festival. Her career in singing lasted up to 1986, taking part in many recordings with orchestras, which included appearances with New York Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
After her retirement from performing, Joanna worked as an arts reporter on the PBS’s “MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour” until 1992, when she was awarded the Emmy the year 1991 in recognition of her reporting about bipolar disorder and creativity. Joanna was married to journalist and novelist Gerald Walker from 1976 until his death in 2004 and was in an affair to Walter Cronkite from 2005 until his death in 2009.
Lucy as well as Joanna Simon’s passing come after the passing of brother Peter Simon, the youngest of four siblings, who had a passion for photography. Peter died of cardiac collapse at the age of 70 in the year 2018 following having a battle with cancer.
