Note: the quality of Ms. Dinnerstein's audio changes at 2:54 due to a phone disconnection and reconnection on another line, which was edited out of the interview.
At 7:30 pm on Tuesday, May 7, Brooklyn-based classical pianist Simone Dinnerstein will perform a program based on her 2022 album Undersong at Stetson Chapel, Kalamazoo College. It's a collection of pieces by a wide range of composers from different eras who used a common structure known as a rondo. "It occurs everywhere in literature and poetry and in our daily lives; we like to revisit moments and have a feeling of returning home or returning to something that we had looked at before. And so every single piece in the program has that element in its compositional form," Dinnerstein tells Cara Lieurance, as she discusses works by Couperin, Philip Glass, and Robert Schumann.
Dinnerstein's former teacher Solomon Mikowsky passed away in March at the age of 88. He was sometimes critical and opinionated, she says, but "he really felt that it was important for performers to feel free to be individuals." She appreciated his support through his life.
Tickets and more information on Simone Dinnerstein's concert is available at the Gilmore Piano Festival website.