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 wide public attention, with The New York Times calling her “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 13 albums that topped the Billboard charts. During the pandemic, she recorded three albums which form a trilogy: A Character of Quiet, An American Mosaic, which was nominated for a Grammy, and Undersong. Her latest, The Eye is the First Circle, is her 14th album (October 2024).

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 multimedia 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.

In 2009, Dinnerstein founded Neighborhood Classics, 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 and is a guest host/producer of WQXR’s Young Artists Showcase.