July 5: GRAMMY-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Makes Highly Anticipated Return to San Francisco – Performing as part of Art of the Piano Festival Presented by Awadagin Pratt
Photo of Simone Dinnerstein by Arianna Dominguez available in high resolution at: https://jensen-artists.squarespace.com/artists-profiles/simone-dinnerstein
GRAMMY-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
Performing as part of Art of the Piano Festival
Presented by Awadagin Pratt
Friday, July 5, 2024 at 7:00pm
San Francisco Conservatory of Music
Barbro Osher Recital Hall | 200 Van Ness Avenue | San Francisco, CA
“an intrepid artistic personality” – The Philadelphia Inquirer
Simone Dinnerstein: www.simonedinnerstein.com
San Francisco, CA – GRAMMY-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described by The Washington Post as an “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity,” will perform on Friday, July 5, 2024 as part of the Art of the Piano Festival, presented by pianist Awadagin Pratt. The performance will be held in the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Barbro Osher Recital Hall (200 Van Ness Avenue).
This concert marks Dinnerstein’s first return to San Francisco since early 2020, just before the pandemic began. Her last concert in the area featured her in performance with Lynn Harrell, Daniel Hope, and the New Century Chamber Orchestra, performing the Beethoven Triple Concerto. The concert would end up becoming Harrell’s final performance of this work.
Dinnerstein, who is celebrated for her distinctive musical voice and commitment to sharing classical music with everyone, will perform several selections found on her 2022 Orange Mountain Music album Undersong –– the final installment in a trilogy of albums recorded at her home in Brooklyn during the pandemic between 2020 and 2022, which also includes A Character of Quiet (Orange Mountain Music, 2020) and Richard Danielpour’s An American Mosaic (Supertrain Records, 2021). The latter surpassed two million streams on Apple Music and was nominated for a 2021 GRAMMY Award in the category of Best Classical Instrumental Solo. The concert program will include Robert Schumann’s Arabesque in C Major, Op. 18 and Kreisleriana, Op. 16; François Couperin’s Les Barricades Mysterieuses; Philip Glass’s Mad Rush; and Erik Satie’s Gnossienne No. 3.
Dinnerstein explains of Undersong’s title: “Undersong is an archaic term for a song with a refrain, and to me it also suggests a hidden text. Glass, Schumann, Couperin and Satie all seem to be attempting to find what they want to say through repetition, as though their constant change and recycling will focus the ear and the mind. This time has been one of reflection and reconsidering for many of us, and this music speaks to the process of revisiting and searching for the meaning beneath the notes, of the undersong.”
About Simone Dinnerstein: American pianist Simone Dinnerstein first came to wider public attention in 2007 through her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, reflecting an aesthetic that was both deeply rooted in the score and profoundly idiosyncratic. She is, wrote The New York Times, “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.”
Dinnerstein has played with orchestras ranging from the New York Philharmonic and 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, Seoul Arts Center and Sydney Opera House. She has made thirteen albums, all of which topped the Billboard charts. During the pandemic she recorded three albums which form a trilogy: A Character of Quiet, An American Mosaic, and Undersong. An American Mosaic was nominated for a Grammy.
In recent years, Dinnerstein has created projects that express her broad musical interests. She gave the `world premiere of The Eye Is the First Circle at Montclair State University, the first multi-media production she 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. She premiered Richard Danielpour’s An American Mosaic, a tribute to those affected by the pandemic, in a performance on multiple pianos throughout Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Following her recording Mozart in Havana, she brought the Havana Lyceum Orchestra from Cuba to the U.S. for the first time, performing eleven concerts. Philip Glass composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 for her, co-commissioned by twelve orchestras. 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, and performed it at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and presented by LA Opera. Dinnerstein has also created her own ensemble, Baroklyn, which she directs. The Washington Post comments, “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. For more information, please visit www.simonedinnerstein.com.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described by The Washington Post as “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity,” will perform as part of the Art of the Piano Festival presented by pianist Awadagin Pratt. Dinnerstein will perform several selections found on her 2022 Orange Mountain Music release, Undersong, including Robert Schumann’s Arabesque in C Major, Op. 18 and Kreisleriana, Op. 16; François Couperin’s Les Barricades Mysterieuses, and Philip Glass’s Mad Rush; and Erik Satie’s Gnossienne No. 3.
Concert details:
Who: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
Performing as part of The Art of the Piano Festival presented by Awadagin Pratt
What: Music by François Couperin, Robert Schumann, Philip Glass, and Erik Satie
When: Friday, July 5, 2024 at 7:00pm
Where: San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Barbro Osher Recital Hall, 200 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94102
Tickets and information: www.artofthepiano.org/calendar-of-events/dinnerstein-recital-2024