Miller Theatre at Columbia University to Stage GOLDBERG VARIATIONS

The Miller Theatre at Columbia University's School of the Arts opens its 2021-2022 Bach series with the Goldberg Variations. The concert will feature pianist Simone Dinnerstein. It is set to take place on Thursday, March 31st at 8pm at the Miller Theatre, located at 2960 Broadway at 116th Street. Tickets for the event start at $35, but students with a valid ID have access to discounted tickets starting at $10. To purchase tickets and learn more information, click here.

Miller Theatre Executive Director Melissa Smey says, "We have collaborated with Simone Dinnerstein for over a decade, featuring her multi-faceted work as a musician, as the founder and leader of the ensemble Baroklyn, and as a curator. She is a thoughtful and gifted artist, whose performances always delight and inspire."

Simone Dinnerstein's international concert career was launched in 2007 with her self-produced recording of J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations. Her exquisite and distinctive performance of the iconic work went on to become the bestselling classical album that year and established the pianist as "an utterly distinctive voice in the forest of Bach interpretation" (The New York Times).

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 twelve albums, all of which topped the Billboard classical charts, with repertoire ranging from Beethoven to Ravel. Her most recent album is Undersong (Orange Mountain Music, 2022), the third album 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.

This season, Dinnerstein has taken on a number of new artistic challenges. 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 joins 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.

Photo Credits: Rob Davidson

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