The Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County Hosts Simone Dinnerstein Tonight

The Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County has announced a rare complete performance of one of the most powerful scores in the history of music, played by one of today's brightest rising stars. Tonight, January 13, 2013, launching the Center's four-concert John S. and James L. Knight Masterworks Season - Sanford and Beatrice Ziff Classical Music Series, SIMONE DINNERSTEIN plays Johann Sebastian Bach's "Goldberg" Variations for her Arsht Center debut.

Tickets range from $75 to $130* and may be purchased through the Adrienne Arsht Center box office by calling (305) 949-6722, or online at www.arshtcenter.org.

"This extraordinary young American is a beacon of the new generation of classical music with her fresh, powerful performances of timeless music and her brilliant classical recordings that have climbed to the top of the Billboard charts," said Arsht Center President and CEO John Richard. "We also are grateful for the support of Knight Foundation and the Ziffs for allowing us to bring one of America's newest and most acclaimed National Treasures to perform in our acoustically superb Knight Concert Hall."

Hailed as "an utterly distinctive voice in the forest of Bach interpretations" by The New York Times, SIMONE DINNERSTEIN first made her mark on the classical music world with a recording of the "Goldberg" Variations that rose to No. 1 in the classical charts and put her at the heart of a long tradition of artists who have climbed this Everest of the keyboard repertory, from Wanda Landowska and Sviatoslav Richter to Glenn Gould and Daniel Barenboim. Now an exclusive Sony Classical recording artist, DINNERSTEIN has stayed true to that first love. Her 2011 recording, Bach: A Strange Beauty-instantly a No. 1 on Billboard's Classical Charts-as well as her 2012 chart-topper Something Almost Being Said: Music of Bach and Schubert, all signal that hers is no casual fling with Bach.

First published in 1741, Bach's "Goldberg" Variations carried an unassuming description on the original title page, "An Aria with Diverse Variations, Composed for Music Lovers to Refresh Their Spirits." It was then and remains to this day one of the most demanding and moving scores in the keyboard repertory. DINNERSTEIN describes her approach to the Baroque master as a current interpretation of a timeless work. "Bach's "Goldberg" Variations is a piece with a profound sense of structure and organization, and yet the listener never experiences these elements as constraints," she says. "It is as expressive as it is diverse. Each variation explores a distinctive mood, a particular sound world, and a unique shade of character and emotion," she continued. "We live in a world that is unimaginably different from Bach's, but this piece speaks to us as powerfully as though it was written for our time."

"Ms. Dinnerstein brings her own pianistic expressivity to the "Goldberg" Variations, probing each variation as if it were something completely new," raved The New York Times.

DINNERSTEIN has been praised in all the major classical music publications as well as in The New York Times, The Times of London, The Wall Street Journal, Time, "O" Oprah Magazine, Slate, The Independent, The Guardian, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, as well as on radio programs ranging from NPR's "Morning Edition" and the BBC's "Woman's Hour" as well as on Minnesota Public Radio and "The Howard Stern Show." She remains an exclusive Sony Classical recording artist, and her worldwide fan base keeps up with her news from the musical front on her website simonedinnerstein.com as well as on Facebook. In Brooklyn, where she lives with her husband and where their son attends public school, she founded Neighborhood Classics, a program of concerts open to the public hosted by New York City public schools.

A free pre-concert lecture, sponsored by Steinway Piano Gallery of Miami, will be held in the Arsht Center's Peacock Education Center at 4 p.m. prior to this concert and each concert on the Ziff Classical Music Series.