Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Will Perform With Musica Sacra at Carnegie Hall

GRAMMY-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, will be a guest soloist with Musica Sacra for its annual holiday season concert on Wednesday December 18, 2024 at 7:30pm.”Classics for Christmas: Mozart, Bach & Beethoven,” led by Music Director Kent Tritle, will be held in Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage (57th St. and 7th Ave.).

Dinnerstein, who is celebrated for her distinctive musical voice and commitment to sharing classical music with everyone, will be the featured soloist in Ludwig van Beethoven's Choral Fantasy in C Minor, Op. 80. The concert program will also include selections from J.S. Bach's Christmas Oratorio, “Weihnachtsoratorium,” motets by Franz Biebl, Francis Poulenc, James Bassi, and Morten Lauridsen, and W.A Mozart's Exsultate, Jubilate, K. 165, featuring Metropolitan Opera soprano Susanna Phillips.

This is the first time that Simone Dinnerstein will perform with Musica Sacra and Kent Tritle. She says, “I am thrilled to collaborate with Kent Tritle and Musica Sacra for the first time. The Chorale Fantasy is a remarkable piece of music, and I have only had the pleasure of performing it once before. I can't think of a better group of musicians with whom to explore this exhilarating work!”

The concert follows Dinnerstein's release of her newest album, The Eye is the First Circle, on October 18, 2024 via Supertrain Records. The album features Charles Ives' Concord Sonata and its release was timed to coincide with the American composer's 150th birthday (October 20, 1874). The new album is a live recording of the premiere of Dinnerstein's multimedia production of the same title, which she conceived and directed. The performance took place at the Alexander Kasser Theater, Montclair State University, New Jersey on October 17, 2021. The Eye is the First Circle also marks Dinnerstein's fourteenth and final recording produced with the late Adam Abeshouse.

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 fourteen albums, all of which topped the Billboard charts and were recorded by GRAMMY Award-winning producer Adam Abeshouse. 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. Her live recording of the premiere of The Eye is the First Circle will be released on October 18, on Supertrain Records. 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.

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