Simone Dinnerstein was born on September 18, 1972; she is an American classical pianist who is noted for her self-financed recording of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations, released in 2007.
She studied in the pre-college program at the Manhattan School of Music with Solomon Mikowsky. At age 15 she auditioned in London with Maria Curcio, a student of Artur Schnabel – on this trip she also met her future husband, Jeremy Greensmith – and at age 18 she dropped out of The Juilliard School of Music to study in London with Curcio for six years. She later attended Juilliard and was a student of Peter Serkin.
When the Telarc label released the self-financed recording of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations her career was “launched into the stratosphere” with the album outselling The White Stripes on Amazon.com. In its first week of commercial release, the recording was at No.1 on the Billboard classical music CD sales chart.
In addition to her solo recital work, she has been a featured guest artist at the Bard Music Festival.
Ms. Dinnerstein has appeared as a chamber musician in performances of contemporary music, including works of Yehudi Wyner and Ned Rorem.
Here she is in a performance of music by Claude Debussy:
