Under the direction of Music Director & Conductor Daniel Meyer, the Lakeside Symphony Orchestra will present a family concert with guest soloist Simone Dinnerstein on piano. The program will feature works by Reena Esmail, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Aaron Copland.
INSTRUMENT DISCOVERY FOR KIDS
Before the concert, children are invited to a hands-on Instrument Discover from 5:30-6:30 p.m. in the Hoover Auditorium lobby. With help from the symphony’s friendly musicians, children can try out violins, trumpets, trombones and more. It’s a fun, interactive way to spark a love of music.
SYMPHONY PRE-CONCERT LECTURE
There will also be a Symphony Pre-Concert Lecture at 5:45 p.m. in Orchestra Hall. Please note special time due to 7 p.m. Family Concert with the Lakeside Symphony Orchestra.
PROGRAM
SIMONE DINNERSTEIN, PIANO
Dinnerstein is an American pianist known for her distinctive musical voice. The Washington Post calls her “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity.”
She first gained wide attention in 2007 with her acclaimed recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, a performance noted for its deep respect for the score and its singular interpretive vision.
Since then, Dinnerstein has built a vibrant international career. She has performed with the New York Philharmonic, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Rai. Her recital appearances include Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Seoul Arts Center and the Sydney Opera House.
She has released 15 albums, all of which have topped the Billboard Classical Albums charts. Her first 14 recordings, produced by Grammy Award winner Adam Abeshouse, span repertoire from Couperin to Glass.
Between 2020-2022, she released a trilogy recorded at home in Brooklyn during the pandemic. A Character of Quiet, featuring works by Philip Glass and Schubert, was praised by NPR as “music that speaks to a sense of the world slowing down” and by The New Yorker as “a reminder that quiet can contain multitudes.”
Danielpour’s An American Mosaic surpassed two million streams on Apple Music and earned a 2021 Grammy nomination for Best Classical Instrumental Solo. The trilogy concluded with Undersong, released in January 2022.
Dinnerstein’s newest recording, Complicité, marks her first all-Bach album in more than a decade and features Jennifer Johnson Cano on mezzo-soprano and Peggy Pearson on oboe d’amore, joined by Baroklyn, the string ensemble Dinnerstein founded and directs.
She is also known for ambitious artistic collaborations and innovative projects. Dinnerstein created and directed The Eye Is the First Circle, a multimedia work inspired by her father Simon Dinnerstein’s painting The Fulbright Triptych and by Charles Ives’s Concord Sonata. The project premiered at Montclair State University and was released in 2024 in celebration of Ives’s 150th birthday.
She premiered Richard Danielpour’s An American Mosaic in a site-specific performance on multiple pianos throughout Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. After recording Mozart in Havana, she brought the Havana Lyceum Orchestra to the U.S. for the first time, performing 11 concerts.
Philip Glass wrote his Piano Concerto No. 3 for her, co-commissioned by 12 orchestras. She joined Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet to premiere André Previn and Tom Stoppard’s Penelope at Tanglewood, Ravinia and Aspen, later performing it at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center and presentations by LA Opera and the Cleveland Orchestra.
She also premiered Philip Lasser’s The Circle and the Child, written for her, with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. In New York, she regularly curates and performs on an innovative Bach series at the Miller Theatre, and she served as Artist-in-Residence at the Kaufman Music Center, where she mentored young musicians and performed Philip Glass’s The Hours and Tirol piano concerto with Baroklyn.
Committed to widening access to classical music, Dinnerstein performs frequently in nontraditional venues. For three decades, she has toured for the Piatigorsky Foundation, which promotes the broad dissemination of classical music. Through this work, she gave the first piano recital in the Louisiana state prison system at the Avoyelles Correctional Center and has also performed at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in a concert organized by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
In 2009, she founded Neighborhood Classics, a public concert series hosted by New York City Public Schools that raises funds for their music programs. She also created Bachpacking, bringing a digital keyboard into elementary classrooms to help young students connect with music.
A proud alumna of Philadelphia’s Astral Artists, she supports the next generation of performers and has served on juries for the Leeds International Piano Competition, the Bach Competition Leipzig, the ARD International Music Competition, the Young Concert Artists Auditions, and the Hilton Head International Piano Competition.
Dinnerstein is on the piano faculty of the Mannes School of Music and is a guest host and producer for WQXR’s Young Artists Showcase. She has studied with three influential pianists — Solomon Mikowsky, Maria Curcio and Peter Serkin — musicians of very different styles who shared the belief that the piano is a path to deeper understanding. In a world filled with sound, she hopes music can still be transformative.
DANIEL MEYER, MUSICAL DIRECTOR & CONDUCTOR
Daniel Meyer was named Music Director & Conductor of the Lakeside Symphony Orchestra in 2019.
