Park Slope’s Simone Dinnerstein has a new album out, Bach: A Strange Beauty (Sony Classical), and it made its debut at No. 1 on the Billboard Traditional Classical Chart.
The woman is amazing. Not only is she a bestselling recording artist and concert pianist but she runs Neighborhood Classics, a series that brings adventurous classical music to Park Slope and the Lower East Side and raises money for local PTAs.
Talk about giving back. The next Neighborhood Classics concert at PS 142 on the Lower East Side is on February 4th at 7PM, a preview performance of a new piano/cello duo by Philip Glass with Maria Bachmann and Wendy Sutter.
Dinnerstein is the only Traditional Classical artist to grace the Billboard Top 200 chart which compiles the entire music industry’s top selling albums.
Bach: A Strange Beauty also spent time as the No. 1 top selling album on Barnesandnoble.com and No. 2 selling album on Amazon.com, in good company with The Decemberists, Cake, The Black Keys and Bruno Mars.
Bach: A Strange Beauty, which is Dinnerstein’s first orchestral disc as well as her first for Sony Classical, sees the pianist return to Bach. She plays three transcriptions of Chorale Preludes with one of his English Suites and two of his Keyboard Concerti.
Simone Dinnerstein’s special affinity to the music of Bach began with her self-funded recording of his Goldberg Variations ranked No. 1 on the Billboard Classical Chart upon its release in 2007.
For more information about the February 4th Neighborhood Classics concert at PS 321 click on read more:
Maria Bachmann’s playing has been described by BBC Music Magazineas “thrilling abandon that never compromises absolute technical command.” She has performed as a soloist with many of the country’s great orchestras, and has recently given the world premiere performances of Philip Glass’ Double Concerto for violin, cello and orchestra with Wendy Sutter and The Orchestra of the Hague in The Netherlands. In 2008, she premiered Glass’ first-ever Sonata for Violin and Piano, which was commissioned for her and which she has recorded for a soon-to-be-released album for Orange Mountain Music called Heart of Glass.
Cellist Wendy Sutter is one of the leading cellists of her generation, and has performed with preeminent ensembles around the world. She was the cellist with the Bang on a Can All-Stars from 2000 to 2008, and is now the artistic director of the Glass Chamber Players, a group of virtuosos who perform masterworks of the classical literature paired with the work of Philip Glass. This past summer she recorded both Glass’ Double Concerto as well as his Cello Concerto while on tour with the Youth Orchestra of the Americas.
At PS 142, Bachmann and Sutter will give a preview performance of a new work composed for them by Philip Glass, as well as Kodaly’s Duo for Violin and Cello, Op 7.