May 7: GRAMMY®-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Presented by The Gilmore International Piano Festival Performing Music from her Album Undersong
Photo by Lisa Marie Mazzucco available in high resolution at: www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/simone-dinnerstein
GRAMMY-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
Presented By The Gilmore International Piano Festival
Performing Music by Couperin, Schumann, Glass, and Satie
From her Album Undersong
Tuesday, May 7, 2023 at 7:30pm
Stetson Chapel | 1200 Academy St. | Kalamazoo, MI
“an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity”
– The Washington Post
Simone Dinnerstein: www.simonedinnerstein.com
Kalamazoo, MI – GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described by The Washington Post as an “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity,” is presented in concert Tuesday, May 7, 2024 by The Gilmore International Piano Festival (1200 Academy St).
Dinnerstein, who is heralded 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, and 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.”
Reflecting on Schumann’s Arabesque, in C Major, Op. 18, Dinnerstein explains that it’s “a very beautiful, poetic piece of music but it ends with a separate type of epilogue that's something different from the piece and modern in a way. There's a rest before you play it and the rest serves as a bridge to Philip Glass’s Mad Rush. It's unclear to the listener whether it's Schumann or Glass. I really like that blurring of the composer's languages with each other."
Dinnerstein offers this connective observation between Schumann’s Kreisleriana, Op. 16 and Schumann’s, Arabesque “The Arabesque has some quick changes in mood and the most breathtaking coda at the end that completely takes it someplace else, written in Schumann’s music language but sounding absolutely contemporary. In comparison, Kreisleriana changes on a dime. Suddenly, you’ll be in a completely different headspace. I think that’s as much about Schumann himself, as about his love for Clara.” Sequenza21 describes Dinnerstein’s approach to Couperin’s Les Barricades Mysterieuses as “sonorous [and] eschewing ornamentation in favor of unadorned, shapely melodies.”
With its distinctly repetitious compositional structure, Philip Glass’s Mad Rush, a piece originally composed for organ at New York City’s St. John the Divine, underscores the collectively seamless nature of this program’s repertoire. The New Criterion describes Dinnerstein’s performance of the piece as “transcendent – the picture of introspection interrupted by unexpected vision.”
Of Erik Satie’s Gnossienne No. 3, Dinnerstein says, “Erik Satie published three Gymnopédie and three Gnossienne together, though he eventually wrote more Gnossienne, a fantastical term that he came up with. The markings in the score for Gnossienne No. 3 are bizarre: “Plan carefully”; “Provide yourself with clear sightedness”; “Alone for a moment”; “So as to get a hollow”; “Quite lost”; “Carry this further”; “Open your mind”. These are written right over the notes. The commentary is dada-esque.”
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.
About The Gilmore: The Gilmore was created in 1989 to honor the legacy of Kalamazoo businessman, pianist, and philanthropist Irving S. Gilmore, and is known for its biennial piano festival, first held in 1991. Since then, each of sixteen festivals has been enjoyed by tens of thousands of visitors to Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA. The next Irving S. Gilmore International Piano Festival is planned for April 24-May 12, 2024. The organization names a career-making Gilmore Artist Award, presented every four years and determined through a non-competitive process. Nine Gilmore Artists have been named, the most recent being 2024 Gilmore Artist Alexandre Kantarow. In 2022, a major gift launched the creation of the Larry J. Bell Jazz Artist Awards, which will be announced for the 2026 Festival. The Gilmore has also commissioned 42 new works for piano since its inception, with three more premiering at the 2024 Festival. For more information, visit thegilmore.org.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: GRAMMY®-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described by The Washington Post as “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity,” is presented in concert by The Gilmore International Piano Festival. 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; Philip Glass’s Mad Rush; and Erik Satie’s Gnossienne No. 3.
Short description: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described as an artist of “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity” (The Washington Post) is presented in concert by The Gilmore International Piano Festival, performing selections by François Couperin, Robert Schumann, Philip Glass, and Erik Satie from her 2022 album Undersong.
Concert details:
Who: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
Presented by The Gilmore International Piano Festival
What: Music by François Couperin, Robert Schumann, Philip Glass, and Erik Satie
When: Tuesday, May 7, 2024 at 7:30pm
Where: Stetson Chapel, 1200 Academy St, Kalamazoo, MI 49006
Tickets and information: www.thegilmore.org/event/simone-dinnerstein/