Simone Dinnerstein

American pianist Simone Dinnerstein is known as “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity” (The Washington Post). Her self-produced recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations in 2007 brought her considerable attention, with The New York Times calling her “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.” She has made thirteen albums, all of which topped the Billboard classical charts, with repertoire ranging from Couperin to Glass. Her most recent album is Undersong (Orange Mountain Music, 2022), the final installment in the trilogy of albums she recorded during the pandemic.

The New York-based pianist’s schedule has taken her around the world, playing with orchestras ranging from the New York Philharmonic and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra to the London Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Rai, and the Havana Lyceum Orchestra, which she brought from Cuba to tour the United States for the very first time. She has also played 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.

Performance highlights include Piano Concerto No. 3, a composition by Philip Glass for her that was co-commissioned by twelve American and Canadian orchestras; New Work for Goldberg Variations, a collaboration with choreographer Pam Tanowitz; and the premiere of André Previn and Tom Stoppard’s Penelope at the Tanglewood, Ravinia, and Aspen music festivals, working with Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet. 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 filmed live at Miller Theatre and streamed to audiences was the last concert they gave before New York City shut down.

Last season, she gave 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). She premiered 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 performed the work live at Columbia University's Butler Library for Miller Theatre’s Live from Columbia virtual concert series. She also joined Renée Fleming, the Emerson String Quartet, and Uma Thurman for performances of André Previn and Tom Stoppard’s Penelope at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center.

Dedicated to her community in Brooklyn, Dinnerstein founded Neighborhood Classics in 2009, a concert series that raises funds for music education programs in New York City schools, and Bachpacking, a music program for elementary schools. A graduate of The Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music, Dinnerstein is on the faculty of the Mannes School of Music.