The Broad Stage presents Simone Dinnerstein, considered one of the foremost interpreters of Bach of her generation, making her Broad Stage debut on Sunday, March 27 at 4pm on the Main Stage.
Dinnerstein follows the enormous success of her 2007 self- produced debut album of The Goldberg Variations with a live performance of Bach's masterpiece. She is a current (2021) Grammy Best Classical Instrumental Solo Nominee for Richard Daniepour's An American Mosaic, an album that has surpassed two million streams on Apple Music.
In August 2007, the album was released on Telarc, earning the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Classical Chart during its first week of sales. It also appeared on "Best of 2007" lists including those of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, several radio stations, iTunes "Editor's Choice Best Classical," Amazon.com Best CDs of 2007, and Barnes & Noble's Top 5 Debut CDs of 2007. In September 2008, the recording received the prestigious Diapason d'Or Award.
The New York Times said Dinnerstein's recording "is a distinctive approach to [the Goldberg Variations]: colorful and idiosyncratic, a contemporary pianist's rather than a harpsichordist's account." Slate says Dinnerstein's career-catapulting record, "[G]lows with a warmth...[and] has its own profound inwardness."
Since that recording, she has had a busy performing career. She has played with orchestras ranging from the New York Philharmonic and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra to the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Rai. She has performed in venues from
Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center to the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Seoul Arts Center and the Sydney Opera House. She has made thirteen albums, all of which topped the Billboard classical charts, with repertoire ranging from Couperin to Glass.
Rob Bailis, Artistic and Executive Director of The Broad Stage, says, "The brilliant pianist Simone Dinnerstein just skyrocketed to fame with her self-produced interpretation of The Goldberg Variations, taking the world by storm as a very young artist, and establishing herself right out of the gate as a major Bach interpreter. I'm thrilled that some years later she has come back to The Goldberg Variations and will be playing them for us in recital. I am really looking forward to hearing how that interpretation has evolved - it left such an incredible mark when we heard it the first time, and I think it will be so rich to hear it in its current context."
Allan Kozinn said in The New York Times, "individual, compelling ... a thoughtfully conceived, thoroughly modern performance that seemed to take into account the development of Western art music since Bach." The Washington Post says, "Ultimately, it is Dinnerstein's unreserved identification with every note she plays that makes her performance so spellbinding."
This season, Simone takes on a number of new artistic challenges. She gives the world premiere of The Eye Is the First Circle at Montclair State University, the first multi-media production she has conceived, created, and directed, which uses as source materials her father Simon Dinnerstein's painting The Fulbright Triptych and Charles Ives's Piano Sonata No. 2 (Concord). In addition, she premieres Richard Danielpour's An American Mosaic, a tribute to those affected by the pandemic, in a performance on multiple pianos placed throughout Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery. She also joins Renée Fleming, the Emerson String Quartet, and
Uma Thurman for performances of André Previn and
Tom Stoppard's Penelope at both
Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
From 2020 to 2022, Simone releases a trilogy of albums recorded at her home in Brooklyn during the pandemic. A Character of Quiet (Orange Mountain Music, 2020), featuring the music of
Philip Glass and Schubert, was described by NPR as, "music that speaks to a sense of the world slowing down," and by The New Yorker as, "a reminder that quiet can contain multitudes." Richard Danielpour's An American Mosaic (Supertrain Records, 2021), surpassed two million streams on Apple Music and is currently nominated for a 2021 Grammy Award in the category of Best Classical Instrumental Solo. The final installment in the trilogy, Undersong, was released in January 2022 on Orange Mountain Music.
Tickets starting at $40 are available at
thebroadstage.org, by calling 310.434.3200, and visiting the box office at 1310 11thSt. Santa Monica CA 90401, beginning three hours prior to performance.
Simone Dinnerstein is an American pianist. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, son and dog, less than a mile from the hospital in which she was born.
In recent years, Simone has created projects that express her broad musical interests. Following her recording of Mozart in Havana, she brought the Havana Lyceum Orchestra from Cuba to the United States for the very first time, raising the funding, booking the concerts, and organizing their housing and transport. Together, Simone and the orchestra played eleven concerts from Miami to Boston.
Philip Glass composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 for Simone, co-commissioned by twelve American and Canadian orchestras. She collaborated with choreographer Pam Tanowitz to create New Work for Goldberg Variations, which was met with widespread critical acclaim. Working with Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet, she premiered André Previn and
Tom Stoppard's Penelope at the Tanglewood, Ravinia and Aspen music festivals. Most recently, she created her own string ensemble, Baroklyn, which she directs from the keyboard. Their performance of Bach's cantata Ich Habe Genug in March 2020 was the last concert she gave before New York City shut down.
Simone is committed to giving concerts in non-traditional venues and to audiences who don't often hear classical music. For the last three decades, she has played concerts throughout the United States for the Piatigorsky Foundation, an organization dedicated to the widespread dissemination of classical music. It was for the Piatigorsky Foundation that she gave the first piano recital in the Louisiana state prison system at the Avoyelles Correctional Center. She has also performed at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in a concert organized by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
Simone founded Neighborhood Classics in 2009, a concert series open to the public and hosted by New York City Public Schools to raise funds for their music education programs. She also created a program called Bachpacking during which she takes a digital keyboard to elementary school classrooms, helping young children get close to the music she loves. She is a committed supporter and proud alumna of Philadelphia's Astral Artists, which supports young performers.
Simone counts herself fortunate to have studied with three unique artists: Solomon Mikowsky, Maria Curcio and Peter Serkin, very different musicians who shared the belief that playing the piano is a means to something greater. The Washington Post comments that "ultimately, it is Dinnerstein's unreserved identification with every note she plays that makes her performance so spellbinding." In a world where music is everywhere, she hopes that it can still be transformative.
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