Longtime University of Houston professor and pianist Abbey Simon died Wednesday at his home in Geneva, according to his family. Simon was just a few weeks shy of turning 100.

Simon was a celebrated pianist who made his debut in the 1940s after training under early 20th-century composer Josef Hofmann.

He began playing the piano at age 3, picking up sounds by ear after hearing music on the radio. Simon won the prestigious Walter Naumburg International Piano Competition in 1940 and would go on to play at New York’s Town Hall, Carnegie Hall and countless performances around the world.

Critics applauded Simon’s colorful and cerebral interpretations of Romantic works, with the New York Times calling him a “supervirtuoso” and former Houston Chronicle music critic Charles Ward calling his playing style “seductive.”

Simon joined the University of Houston’s faculty in 1977 and held a distinguished professorship at the university’s Moores School of Music. In 1984, Simon founded the International Piano Festival, which presents master classes and recitals of some of the world’s piano virtuosos. Simon also taught at Indiana University and the Juilliard School in New York City, said Andrew Davis, dean of UH’s Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts.

“He loved it, he loved the students, he loved to play and he just would not stop playing,” Davis said.

Colleagues said he was also one of the most recorded artists of all time, with his melodies running in popular songs.

Retired University of Houston entertainment law professor Michael Olivas served on a committee to choose honorary doctorates with Simon in the mid-1990s when the two fell into a conversation about intellectual property. Simon invited Olivas to come listen as he practiced a concerto by Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff in his campus studio. As Simon played, Olivas heard the notes of a song that sounded strikingly familiar to a popular music tune: Eric Carmen’s “All by Myself.”

“He was playing something I recognized, and he said, ‘You’ve got a sophisticated palette,’” Olivas said.

The legendary pianist was deeply dedicated to his teaching career. Students said Simon coached young pianists through imbuing passion in their performances with passion, building up the reputation of the university’s musical program.

Olivas said he gave Simon a CD featuring “All by Myself” as proof that he’d heard the melody in the song and in turn, the legendary pianist said he would use it as a lesson to teach young music students to search for familiar sounds and pay better attention to popular music.

“‘This gives me a whole new appreciation,’” Simon told Olivas at the time.

Simon moved back to his two-story home in Geneva after retiring from the University of Houston’s faculty in April 2019 at age 99, Davis said.

Davis visited Simon at his Switzerland home in August, and while the noted pianist could no longer climb the stairs to the upper-floor studio that held two Steinway concert grand pianos, he was insistent that the dean tour the studio-slash-shrine to his decades-long musical career.

“He was yelling at me from the lower level, ‘go look at this, go look at that,’” Davis said with a chuckle.

If his fingers weren’t fluttering over black and ivory keys or giving lessons to students, he could be found at several cafes around his apartment in Montrose. Simon was particularly fond of The Black Hole Coffee House on Graustark, The Black Labrador Pub, which shuttered its doors Dec. 15, and Diedrich Coffee, which closed in 2006, Davis said.

Simon was injured in a car crash in 2016 that broke two of his fingers and broke one of his wrists. After undergoing occupational therapy and getting a metal plate installed in his wrist, he continued to play, returning to a recital in 2017 at the International Piano Festival. But there was seemingly no question about his return; after all, Simon was nothing but persistent in his pursuit of a splendid performance, colleagues said.

“My motto is that very artistic motto: Keep moving, otherwise they bury you,” Simon told the Houston Chronicle in 2007.

gwendolyn.wu@chron.com