Edward Simon was born in the coastal town of Punta Cardón, Venezuela where he grew up in a family of musicians surrounded by the sounds and rhythms of Latin and Caribbean music. The talent he showed as a youth led his father to send him to study in the US, where he won scholarships in classical piano at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia under the tutelage of concert pianist Susan Starr and in jazz at the Manhattan School of Music where he studied with Harold Danko.