May 12: GRAMMY®-Nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein and her Ensemble Baroklyn Perform First Ever All-Philip Glass Concert
Presented by Kaufman Music Center
Monday, May 12, 2025 at 7:30pm
Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center
129 West 67th Street | New York, NY
Tickets & Information
PLUS Dinnerstein & Baroklyn’s New Bach Album Complicité Out May 30
Review downloads and CDs available upon request
New York, NY – On Monday, May 12, 2025 at 7:30pm, GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, an Artist-in-Residence with the Kaufman Music Center (KMC) this season, performs her first ever all-Philip Glass concert at KMC’s Merkin Hall (129 West 67th St), as part of KMC’s Piano Dialogues series. Described by The New York Times as “colorful and idiosyncratic,” Dinnerstein will perform three works by the American minimalist master – Glass’s Mad Rush for solo piano, plus two concertos – Glass’s “Tirol” Piano Concerto (Piano Concerto No. 1) and – for the first time ever – his Suite from The Hours. Dinnerstein will perform the latter two works with Baroklyn, the string ensemble she founded and directs. (The ensemble’s name is a portmanteau of Baroque and Brooklyn, Dinnerstein’s home borough). As part of her residency at the Kaufman Music Center, Dinnerstein will also lead a performance of J.S. Bach’s keyboard concertos with young pianists from Kaufman’s Special Music School High School on May 22, 2025, and lead a performance of Philip Glass ‘s Etudes with Lucy Moses School students and faculty on June 8, 2025.
Simone Dinnerstein is well known for her distinctive musical voice and increasingly so for her interpretations of music by Philip Glass. She has performed and recorded his Piano Concerto No. 3, which Glass wrote for her in 2017, co-commissioned by twelve orchestras. NPR Music reported of her recording of the piece, “Dinnerstein's creamy tone and elastic phrasing gives the music an air of Schubertian warmth and wistfulness.”
Of what is particularly special about her string ensemble Baroklyn, Dinnerstein says: “We’re a community that shares the artistic vision that is most important to me – that music should be creative and new. Rehearsal is important to us, and I’ve been influenced by theater practice in which we listen to each other and pass musical ideas and phrases within the group.”
Dinnerstein and Baroklyn’s performance at Kaufman Music Center comes just before the May 30 release of their new album, Complicité, on Supertrain Records. This is Dinnerstein’s first recording with Baroklyn. The album features the music of J.S. Bach and Philip Lasser. Complicité includes Dinnerstein and Baroklyn’s arrangement of Bach’s chorale Herr Gott, nun schleuß den Himmel auf, BWV 617, Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in E Major, BWV 1053 and his chorale Der Leib war in der Erden, BWV 161 (also arranged by Dinnerstein and Baroklyn); Bach’s Cantata 170, Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust with continuo realization by Philip Lasser; and In the Air, Lasser’s recomposition of Bach’s Air on the G String. Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo-soprano, and Peggy Pearson, oboe d’amore, join Dinnerstein and Baroklyn on this deeply felt recording, which embodies the artistic vision that Dinnerstein and Baroklyn hold dear. Read the album press release here.
Dinnerstein and Baroklyn’s all-Glass program at Kaufman Music Center will also be recorded for future commercial release, following the concert.
Glass’s “Tirol” Piano Concerto, composed in 2000, went unperformed in New York for more than 20 years until Dinnerstein’s performance of the work with the Brooklyn Orchestra and Olivier Glissant in November 2023. Glass based the concerto on melody fragments of traditional Austrian Volkslied, or folk music, in the Tyrolean tradition. Dinnerstein says of the piece, “The second movement of the ‘Tirol’ is what first drew me to it. Built almost as a set of variations, the sound is lush and pulsating, and its mood relates to his Symphony No 3 for strings. I love the play between intense lyricism and a feeling of austerity, so reminiscent of Schubert’s writing.”
Glass’s Suite from The Hours is a three-movement piano concerto taken from his film score for Stephen Daldry’s film The Hours, an adaptation of the novel by Michael Cunningham. The score received Golden Globe, GRAMMY, and Academy Award nominations, along with winning a British Academy Film Award in Film Music.
Glass’s Mad Rush was originally composed for the organ at New York City’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Dinnerstein recorded the piece for her 2022 album Undersong (Orange Mountain Music). The Washington Post wrote of her interpretation, “The vast architecture of Glass’s Mad Rush was shot through with ever-changing light, creating a hypnotic effect with a delicate symbiosis of the physical and spiritual,” while NPR called it, “gorgeous, transportive.”
More 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 Concord Sonata. She released her live recording of the premiere in October 2024 on Supertrain Records to coincide with Ives’s 150th birthday. The Eye is the First Circle also marked Dinnerstein’s fourteenth and final recording produced with the late Adam Abeshouse. Dinnerstein 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.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, an Artist-in-Residence with the Kaufman Music Center (KMC) this season, performs an all-Philip Glass concert as part of KMC’s Piano Dialogues series. Described by The New York Times as “colorful and idiosyncratic,” Dinnerstein will perform three works by the American minimalist master – Glass’s Mad Rush for solo piano, plus two concertos with her string ensemble Baroklyn – Glass’s “Tirol” Piano Concerto (Piano Concerto No. 1) and, for the first time, his Suite from The Hours.
Concert details:
Who: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Performs an All-Philip Glass Concert with her string ensemble Baroklyn
What: Philip Glass’s “Tirol” Piano Concerto, Mad Rush, and Suite from The Hours
When: Monday, May 12, 2025 at 7:30pm
Where: Merkin Hall at Kaufmann Music Center, 129 West 67th Street, New York, NY 10023
Tickets and information: https://www.kaufmanmusiccenter.org/mch/event/simone-dinnerstein-with-baroklyn