September 23rd, Simone Dinnerstein Performs with Emmanuel Music Conducted by Ryan Turner with Video Installation by Laurie Olinder
Photo of Simone Dinnerstein by Lisa-Marie Mazzucco available in high resolution at: https://jensen-artists.squarespace.com/artists-profiles/simone-dinnerstein
Pianist Simone Dinnerstein with Emmanuel Music Conducted by Artistic Director Ryan Turner
Performing Concertos by J.S. Bach, Mozart, and Glass
with Video Installation by Laurie Olinder
Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 7pm
Distler Hall at Tufts University
20 Talbot Ave. | Medford, MA
Tickets and information:
www.emmanuelmusic.org/performance-info/season-announcement
“an utterly distinctive voice in the forest of Bach interpretation”
– The New York Times
Simone Dinnerstein: www.simonedinnerstein.com
Medford, MA – Following an immensely successful performance in June 2022, pianist Simone Dinnerstein returns to perform with Emmanuel Music on Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 7pm at Distler Hall at Tufts University (12 Talbot Ave.). Artistic Director Ryan Turner will conduct. Celebrated for her distinctive musical voice and her commitment to sharing classical music with everyone, Dinnerstein and Emmanuel Music will perform three piano concertos: Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052, Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C Major, K. 467, and the “Tirol” Concerto for Piano and Orchestra by Philip Glass. The performance will be coupled with a visual counterpoint in the form of an abstract video journey by artist Laurie Olinder. Dinnerstein and Olinder have collaborated before in Dinnerstein’s 2021 production, The Eye is the First Circle.
Of the opportunity to collaborate with Dinnerstein again this season, Music Director Ryan Turner says:
“I am incredibly excited to work together again! [Simone Dinnerstein’s] collaborative approach combined with dazzling skill and poetic interpretation make for an ideal musical partner. And, our orchestra relishes playing with Simone!“
Recognized for her appreciation of J.S. Bach’s work, Dinnerstein recorded Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in D Minor BWV 1052 on her 2011 Sony Classical release, Bach: A Strange Beauty. Even then, more than 10 years ago, the Grammy-nominated pianist was lauded for her approach to Bach’s music and the resulting beauty and skill of her execution. NPR described Dinnerstein’s recording as a, “wonderfully expressive interpretation.” One can also relish in Dinnerstein’s thoughtful approach to Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C Major, K. 467 on her 2017 Sony Classical release, Mozart in Havana with the Havana Lyceum Orchestra. Gramophone describes Dinnerstein’s performance as offering “heartfelt directness [and] purity of line.”
Dinnerstein recorded and extensively performed Philip Glass’s Piano Concerto No. 3, written for her in 2017, but this will be her first time performing Glass’s Piano Concerto No. 1 “Tirol” from 2000, a seldom-played work based on traditional Austrian folk music, Volkslied.
Of this unique piece by Glass and the opportunity to work with Laurie Olinder again, Dinnerstein says:
“I am eagerly looking forward to collaborating again with Ryan Turner and Emmanuel Music in this unusual program featuring three of my favorite piano concertos. I have performed Bach’s D Minor and Mozart’s K 467 many times, but this will be my first performance of Glass’s Tirol. The second movement of the Tirol is what first drew me to it. Built almost as a set of variations, the sound is lush and pulsating, and its mood relates to his Symphony No 3 for strings. I love the play between intense lyricism and a feeling of austerity, so reminiscent of Schubert’s writing.
I’m also excited that the visual artist, Laurie Olinder, will be collaborating on this performance with her colorful and dynamic video art. Laurie and I worked together over the pandemic creating The Eye is the First Circle, a devised work using my father, Simon Dinnerstein’s Fulbright Triptych and Charles Ives’s Concord Sonata. I can’t wait to see how she brings this added visual dimension to the music on this program.”
Laurie Olinder says:
“Watching the shadow of leaves trembling on a wall, a current of air fluttering the leaves on a branch or the sun’s reflection rippling on the water’s surface. The rhythm of nature has a music all its own. This is what inspires me. The mind seeks to find connections to these cadences.”
About Simone Dinnerstein: American pianist Simone Dinnerstein has a distinctive musical voice. The Washington Post has called her “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity.” She 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. www.simonedinnerstein.com
About Emmanuel Music: Through its performing, teaching, mentoring, and scholarly activities, Emmanuel Music occupies a unique niche: a living laboratory for the music of J. S. Bach. Emmanuel Music finds new and creative ways for audiences and musicians to engage with the artistic, spiritual, and humanistic aspects of the music of J. S. Bach, the cornerstone of our musical output for our first fifty years.
We seek to make Bach’s music deeply relevant to our current lives, including highlighting the connections between Bach and artists that he influenced, especially creative voices that have been marginalized in our society. Building on the symbiotic partnership between an arts nonprofit and an intellectually curious and open-minded religious community, Emmanuel Music further embraces Bach’s sacred music, especially his cantatas, as opportunities to explore the transcendent aspects of our shared human experience.
By embracing a new mission and strategic plan in March 2021, Emmanuel Music asserts its role as an essential musical, humanistic, intellectual force for participatory engagement in its local community, and around the world through its online programming. Learn more at www.emmanuelmusic.org.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: Simone Dinnerstein, described by The New York Times as “an utterly distinctive voice in the forest of Bach interpretation,” performs with Emmanuel Music conducted by Artistic Director Ryan Turner in three piano concertos - J.S. Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in D Minor BWV 1052, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C Major, K. 467, and Philip Glass’s “Tirol” Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. The performance will be coupled with a visual counterpoint in the form of an abstract video journey by artist Laurie Olinder.
Short description: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described by The New York Times as “an utterly distinctive voice in the forest of Bach interpretation,” performs with Emmanuel Music and Artistic Director Ryan Turner in J.S. Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in D Minor BWV 1052, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C Major, K. 467, and Philip Glass’s “Tirol” Concerto for Piano and Orchestra with visuals by artist Laurie Olinder
Concert details:
Who: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein with Emmanuel Music
Conducted by Artistic Director Ryan Turner
What: Music by J.S. Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Philip Glass with abstract visuals by artist Laurie Olinder
When: Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 7pm
Where: Distler Hall at Tufts University; 20 Talbot Ave, Medford, MA 02155
Tickets and information: www.emmanuelmusic.org/performance-info/season-announcement