Multi-faceted Claudia Simpson-Jones puts down Olympia Chamber Orchestra conductor’s baton

Before she became the conductor of the Olympia Chamber Orchestra, Claudia Simpson-Jones had many adventures, both musical and non-musical.

She was a pilot for major airlines. She performed in Las Vegas. She was featured in Glamour magazine.

But since she was 15, Simpson-Jones been a conductor.

Saturday, she’ll conduct her last concert for the orchestra, and Sunday she’ll embark on her next adventure — a monthlong road trip across the country.

Simpson-Jones, 71, will be driving her motor home, accompanied by her four cats.

“I’m going to make a 6,000-mile trip around the United States,” she said in an interview last week. “I’m going to the South and then I’m coming back through the North.

“Most of my life was spent on the road,” she added. “When I had a Las Vegas act, I was on the road all the time, and when I was a pilot.”

In Las Vegas, Simpson-Jones, then Claudia Simpson, was half of the twin-piano act “Carol and Claudia: The Livin’ Dolls.”

Simpson-Jones and good friend Carol Padgett, now Carol Stivers, played pianos, fiddles, banjos and more, performing everything from classical to light rock, from show tunes to country. The duo made a couple of albums, too. “They’re old 33-1/3rds,” she said.

Simpson-Jones has stayed in touch with Stivers and will be visiting her in Murphy, North Carolina.

It was the high-rolling Las Vegas life — and tours in the United States, Canada and the Bahamas — that led Simpson-Jones to the high-flying life of a pilot.

“I learned to fly so I could fly the band around,” she said. “By the time airlines were hiring women, I had several thousand hours just with what I was doing privately.

“It was nothing that I’d planned to do with my life,” she said. “Music was what I’d planned to do with my life. It was nothing but a detour that turned out not to be a short detour.”

She was one of the first women to serve as a pilot for major airlines, going to work for Continental Airlines in 1977 and retiring from Southwest Airlines in 2000.

She met her late husband Hal Jones when she taught his daughter, Cathy, how to fly. Cathy Jones later became a pilot, too, and the two worked together for Southwest.

Cathy Jones, living in Las Vegas, is another of the people Simpson-Jones will visit on her journey.

Simpson-Jones has had brushes with fame, too. In 1980, Glamour magazine featured her in an article about 10 outstanding working women. She and the other featured women — including NBC’s first female technical director and the head of corrections for Jackson County, Mo. — had lunch with then-First Lady Rosalynn Carter.

After Hal Jones died in a helicopter accident, Simpson-Jones married Fred Sorenson, who played Jock, the pilot in the opening scenes of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

“We flew together and delivered large aircraft all over the world,” she said. “That is a book in itself.”

The couple later divorced, but they’ve remained friends, and Simpson-Jones also plans to visit him on her trip.

Simpson-Jones, who flew helicopters, too, still has her pilot’s license and lives on a small private airport in Yelm, but she hasn’t flown in five or six years.

These days, she’s looking for adventure at a lower altitude and with less stress, which is part of what prompted her retirement from conducting the orchestra, a volunteer job she’s held for the past dozen years.

“I want to travel, and I want to compose,” she said. “And I’m looking for more stress-free times in my life.

“A musician can make a small mistake in the music, and nobody ever hears it or knows it, but a conductor’s job on that podium is very exacting. It’s like preparing for a starring role in a play.”

The orchestra will miss Simpson-Jones, said Rex Richardson, who plays bassoon and serves on the board. The board is currently seeking a new conductor.

“We all enjoy working with her,” he said. “She’s done a lot for us over the 12 years in a rather thankless, unpaid position. She has worked very hard doing everything she can to make sure that the orchestra is a success.”

Though she’s stepping out of one starring role, Simpson-Jones will continue her involvement in music, and she’s not finished with conducting.

She teaches music at St. Martin’s University and has served as conductor and pianist for plays there; she conducts Opera Pacifica, though the group is currently mostly inactive; and she will serve on the board of the orchestra, which has named her conductor emeritus. Simpson-Jones also plays jazz piano and sings jazz with a variety of local groups and plays clarinet in the American Legion Band, and she’s the organist at Bethany Lutheran Church in Spanaway.

In the summer of 2017, she hopes to conduct “Evita.” “I’ll be rallying the forces of Opera Pacifica when that time comes,” she said.

And, for the first time, she’s subscribed to the Seattle Symphony’s season, planning ahead to attend several concerts.

“I’ve never been able to do that,” she said.

This story was originally published June 2, 2016 at 3:41 AM with the headline "Multi-faceted Claudia Simpson-Jones puts down Olympia Chamber Orchestra conductor’s baton."