Sunday, February 10, 2019 - 4:00 pm - Mechanics Hall

PROGRAM

Bach's Goldberg Variations,  arranged for piano and orchestra by Sarah Darling and Alex Fortes, in collaboration with Simone Dinnerstein.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

American pianist Simone Dinnersteinis known for her “majestic originality of vision” (The Independent) and her “lean, knowing and unpretentious elegance” (The New Yorker).

2017 saw three major projects for Dinnerstein. She released the album Mozart in Havana, recorded in Cuba with the Havana Lyceum Orchestra. She went on to bring the orchestra to the United States for their first ever American tour, playing eleven concerts from Miami to Boston. Philip Glass wrote a piano concerto for Dinnerstein, co-commissioned by a consortium of twelve orchestras. She premiered it in Boston with string orchestra A Far Cry in what the Wall Street Journal described as a “graceful, fluid reading.” At the New York premiere The New Yorker was “struck dumb with admiration” by this new addition to the piano concerto repertoire. During 2018 Dinnerstein will perform the concerto withtwelve orchestras across America and internationally with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra and the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra. She will release a recording of Glass’ piano concerto with A Far Cry in spring 2018. Finally, Dinnerstein continued her rich history with Bach’s Goldberg Variations. She collaborated with choreographer Pam Tanowitz on New Work for Goldberg Variations, which featured on the 2017 top ten lists of critics at The New York Times and The Boston Globe.

Dinnerstein first attracted attention in 2007 with her self-produced recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. It was a remarkable success, reaching No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Classical Chart in its first week of sales and was named to many "Best of 2007" lists including those of The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The New Yorker. The recording also received the prestigious Diapason D’Or in France and established Dinnerstein’s distinctive and original approach. The New York Times called her “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.” She has gone on to make a further eight albums since then with repertoire ranging from Beethoven to Ravel.

Since 2007 the New York-based pianist’s performance schedule has taken her around the world. She has performed at venues including the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Vienna Konzerthaus, Berlin Philharmonie, Sydney Opera House, Seoul Arts Center, and London's Wigmore Hall; festivals that include the Lincoln Center Mostly Mozart Festival, the Aspen, Verbier, and Ravinia festivals; and performances with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Dresden Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Berlin, RAI National Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Orquestra Sinfonica Brasileira, and the Tokyo Symphony.

Dinnerstein has played concerts throughout the U.S. for the Piatigorsky Foundation, an organization dedicated to bringing classical music to non-traditional venues. She gave the first classical music performance in the Louisiana state prison system at the Avoyelles Correctional Center, and performed at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in a concert organized by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Dedicated to her community, in 2009 Dinnerstein founded Neighborhood Classics, a concert series open to the public hosted by New York public schools which raises funds for their music education programs. She has also created a program called Bachpacking for elementary schools. She takes a digital keyboard into individual classrooms, helping young children to get close to the music she loves. Dinnerstein, a winner of Astral Artists’ National Auditions, is a graduate of The Juilliard School where she was a student of Peter Serkin. She also studied with Solomon Mikowsky at the Manhattan School of Music and in London with Maria Curcio. She is on the faculty of the Mannes School of Music and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son and Old English Sheepdog, Daisy.

A Far Crystands at the forefront of an exciting new generation in classical music. According to the New York Times, the GRAMMY nominated self-conducted orchestra “brims with personality or, better, personalities, many and varied.” A Far Cry was founded in 2007 by a tightly-knit collective of 17 young professional musicians — the Criers — and since the beginning has fostered those personalities, developing an innovative structure of rotating leadership both on stage and behind the scenes. By expanding the boundaries of orchestral repertoire and experimenting with the ways music is prepared, performed, and experienced, A Far Cry has been embraced throughout the world with hundreds of performances coast to coast and across the globe, and hundreds of thousands of online views of live streaming concerts and YouTube archives. "Dreams and Prayers” and “Law of Mosaics”, the first albums from A Far Cry's in-house label, Crier Records, have collectively garnered a GRAMMY nomination and critical acclaim from the New Yorker’s Alex Ross. The Criers are proud to call Boston home, and maintain strong roots in the city, rehearsing at their storefront music center in Jamaica Plain and fulfilling the role of Chamber Orchestra in Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Collaborating with local students through an educational partnership with the New England Conservatory, A Far Cry aims to pass on the spirit of collaboratively-empowered music to the next generation.