Postcard from the Slope

The Dinnersteins of Park Slope

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The Dinnersteins of Park Slope were cited in 2006 in the very first Park Slope 100:

SIMON, RENEE, AND SIMONE DINNERSTEIN, artist, educator, acclaimed pianist, because they are the first family of Park Slope creativity.

NOw that Simone is making her New York
Philharmonic debut on July 7th and 8th the New York newspapers are
gaga, too.
Yesterday I ran into Renee on Seventh Avenue and she graciously thanked me for putting something about the Avery Fisher Hall concerts on the blog. She also told me about a nice piece in the New York Post about Simone and her family and their distinctly Park Slope story.
In fact, hers is such a Cinderella tale — the whole Billboard-topping, Oprah magazine-raving, globe-hopping trip — that playing with the Phil could seem almost anticlimactic.

Yeah — as if.

"I never thought I'd play with them!" says Simone (sah-MOAN-ah), who'll play Liszt, not Bach, at Avery Fisher Hall on Tuesday and Wednesday.

"I went there last week to try out the piano on the stage, and I
could barely get out the words to the guard to tell him where I was
going. This is what I saw, growing up, as completely unattainable."

She grew up where she lives now — in Park Slope, the daughter and
niece, respectively, of painters Simon and Harvey Dinnerstein. (There's
a jewelry designer in the family, too.) She fell in love with the piano
when she heard Chopin at dance class, but she wasn't given lessons till
she was 7, which in these prodigy-ridden times is practically elderly.

Simone's father, Simon Dinnerstein, is wonderful painter, who likes to sketch distinctive Park Slope locals like Thomas Park, a barista at Connecticutt Muffin and Wajih Salem, one of the owners of D'Vine Taste. He was featured in a Brooklyn Paper article by me.

Renee's award-winning talents as a teacher are well known. In fact, when my son was first at PS 321 all the parents prayed that their children would get "the great Renee Dinnerstein" as a kindergarten teacher. I believe that she developed PS 321's Reading Buddies" program, which matches an
older and younger student to spend a library period together throughout a school year.

That program is one of the many best things about PS 321. And the Dinnersteins are lovely neighbors to have.

4 thoughts on “The Dinnersteins of Park Slope”

  1. Harvey Dinnerstein made a drawing of me when I was about 8 or 9 years old. When he started it, I put my hands in front of my face and then removed them. He told me to put them back because he had to work on hands. His father Louis was first cousin to my mother Jeanne. I, at the time, lived at 219 Grafton Street in Brownsville and we lived at 218 Legion Street in Brownsville with my maternal grandparents, Louis and Rose Dinnerstein. Last I spoke with him was about 1975.

  2. We love living in Park Slope. Simon and I moved to the neighborhood in 1966 and I began teaching at 321 in 1968 (34 children were in my 2nd grade class!) It’s so wonderful to see children returning to raise their children. We’re really excited about Simone’s debut with the Philharmonic and particularly pleased that so many Park Slope neighbors will be there to share the performance with us.
    Renee

  3. Congratulations, Simone! And I never knew that’s how you spelled the D’Vine Taste co-owner’s name… I’ve always heard him introduce himself as Roger, which I guess is an Americanized form of Wajih.
    Just wanted to give OtBKB readers an advance heads-up: Harvey Dinnerstein will be reading and signing copies of his book, Underground Together at Community Bookstore sometime this fall. Details to come.

  4. I had a wonderful very young teacher named Miss Dinnerstein for a class in Renaissance Art in Northern Europe at Brooklyn College in the spring of 1971. I wonder if she is related to them.

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