Oct. 4: Announcing The Birch Festival 2025 Fall Edition Featuring Pianist Simone Dinnerstein, Cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach, and Violinist Yevgeny Kutik
Clockwise: Simone Dinnerstein, Alexis Pia Gerlach, and Yevgeny Kutik
The Birch Festival: Fall Edition 2025
Bach, Mozart, and More
October 4, 2025
Yevgeny Kutik, Artistic Director & Rachel Barker, Executive Director
Featured Performance:
Pianist Simone Dinnerstein, Cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach, and Violinist Yevgeny Kutik
Saturday, October 4, 2025 at 3pm
First Congregational Church Stockbridge | 4 Main Street | Stockbridge, MA
Tickets and Registration Information: www.thebirchfestival.org
Stockbridge, MA — The Birch Festival welcomes the fall season in the Berkshires with a wonderful day of camaraderie and music in Stockbridge, MA on Saturday, October 4, 2025. Kicking off its third season, The Birch Festival presents a thrilling performance featuring guest artist and GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein and acclaimed cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach, performing with The Birch Festival Artistic Director and Co-Founder violinist Yevgeny Kutik, on Saturday, October 4, 2025 at 3pm at First Congregational Church Stockbridge (4 Main Street). Berkshire County Students and a guardian may attend the concert for free. Also on October 4 at 10am, audiences are invited to the “Don’t Tap on the Glass” open rehearsal, which offers a free, behind-the-scenes look at the finer work that goes into preparing for the afternoon’s main event.
Dinnerstein, Gerlach, and Kutik’s featured concert on October 4 spotlights three composers who have each made substantial marks in the classical canon – J.S. Bach, W.A. Mozart, and Philip Glass. Simone Dinnerstein and Alexis Pia Gerlach will give a rare performance of all three of J.S. Bach’s Viola da Gamba Sonatas, to be performed on cello and piano.. Written in the 1740s, these works are gems of the chamber repertoire and it is uncommon to hear them presented together as part of a single concert program. Yevgeny Kutik will join Dinnerstein for W.A. Mozart’s Sonata in E minor for Violin and Piano, K. 304. Written in Paris in 1778 shortly after the death of Mozart’s mother, the Sonata is an introspective and vulnerably beautiful work. Dinnerstein closes the program with a solo performance of Mad Rush by the iconic Philip Glass. Mad Rush was composed in 1978, originally on and for the organ at New York City’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Dinnerstein recorded Mad Rush as part of her 2022 album Undersong, which San Francisco Classical Voice praised for its “dreamy musing on the spatial quality of Glass’ music.”
Birch Festival Artistic Director Yevgeny Kutik says, “We are thrilled to launch the third season of The Birch Festival with a program that reflects what we strive to share with our community: beauty, dialogue, and discovery. To bring Simone Dinnerstein – one of today’s most imaginative interpreters – together with the wonderful Alexia Pia Gerlach for all three of Bach’s Viola da Gamba Sonatas is a rare and awesome occasion. With the addition of Mozart’s profoundly personal E minor Sonata this program celebrates how far we’ve come in three years while offering audiences a richly soulful and inspiring program.”
The Birch Festival was founded in 2022 by Lenox-based husband-and-wife team Yevgeny Kutik, an internationally renowned violinist who serves as Artistic Director, and Rachel Barker, who is the non-profit organization’s Executive Director. The Birch Festival promotes and propels distinct voices in music, whether through new composition or creative interpretation of old favorites. It offers leading musicians a chance to play and establish relationships in the Berkshires, while recognizing the importance of their work by offering compensation that sustains and values their efforts in this industry. The Birch Festival’s mission is to bring world-leading musicians for artist residencies in Berkshire County schools, and work in tandem with local business and cultural partnerships. Kutik, a Belarusian-Jewish refugee resettled in Pittsfield by the Jewish Federation in the 1990s, named the festival for his grandmother Sima Berezkina, whose last name means “birch tree.” With significance in many global cultures, birch trees symbolize growth, resilience, and adaptability – qualities that Sima embodied.
The Birch Festival’s Fall 2025 Schedule:
“Don’t Tap on the Glass” Open Rehearsal
Saturday, October 4, 2025 at 10am
First Congregational Church Stockbridge (4 Main Street; Stockbridge, MA 01262)
Free and open to the public, registration required. (Tickets limited)
The Birch Festival welcomes the community of the Berkshires to enjoy a morning preview of the festival’s featured concert at its “Don’t Tap on the Glass” open rehearsal at First Congregational Church Stockbridge. Registration required.
The Birch Festival Featured Performance: Bach, Mozart, and Philip Glass
Sunday, October 4, 2025 at 3pm
First Congregational Church Stockbridge (4 Main Street; Stockbridge, MA 01262)
Tickets: www.thebirchfestival.org
Pianist Simone Dinnerstein and cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach, along with violinist and Birch Festival Artistic Director and Co-Founder Yevgeny Kutik, will perform a concert showcasing the music of classical icons, J.S. Bach, W.A. Mozart, and Philip Glass. Berkshire County Students and a guardian may attend for free.
About the Artists & Festival Directors:
About Yevgeny Kutik: With a “dark-hued tone and razor-sharp technique” (The New York Times), violinist Yevgeny Kutik has captivated audiences worldwide with an old-world sound that communicates a modern intellect. Praised for his technical precision and virtuosity, he is lauded for his poetic and imaginative interpretations of both standard works and newly composed repertoire. A native of Minsk, Belarus, Kutik began violin studies with his mother, Alla Zernitskaya, and immigrated to the U.S. with his family at the age of five. An advocate for the Jewish Federations of North America, the organization that assisted his family in coming to the US, he regularly speaks and performs across the country to promote the assistance of refugees from around the world. Kutik’s discography, all on Marquis Classics, includes The Death of Juliet and Other Tales (2021), Meditations on Family (Marquis Classics 2019), Words Fail (2016), Music from the Suitcase (2014), and Sounds of Defiance (2012). Committed to the music of our time, Kutik regularly gives premiere and repeat performances of major works by today’s most celebrated composers. For more information, please visit www.yevgenykutik.com.
About Rachel Barker: Rachel Barker is an educator and writer. Barker has been awarded spots in writers workshops for both nonfiction and fiction, including the Key West Literary Seminar, the Aspen Institute's Aspen Summer Words, and multiple residencies with Write On, Door County. She has consulted and presented for a number of organizations throughout the country, including the Yale Council for African Studies, Flint Institute of Music, Boston University's African Studies Center, Primary Source, and the Wayland/Weston Interfaith Council on Teaching Religion in Schools. Rachel Barker’s MEd. is from Boston College, where she graduated with a focus on social justice and teaching English language learners. Her undergraduate degree in Anthropology is from Boston University, and she currently studies Religion at Harvard University.
About Simone Dinnerstein: American pianist Simone Dinnerstein has played with orchestras ranging from the New York Philharmonic and Montreal Symphony Orchestra to the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Rai. She has performed in venues from Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center to the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, Seoul Arts Center and Sydney Opera House. She has made fifteen albums, all of which have topped the Billboard classical charts. Her first fourteen albums were recorded with Grammy Award-winning producer Adam Abeshouse. During the pandemic she recorded three albums which form a trilogy: A Character of Quiet, An American Mosaic, and Undersong. An American Mosaic was nominated for a Grammy. Her most recent recording Complicité (Supertrain Records, 2025), is her first all-Bach album in over ten years and features Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo-soprano and Peggy Pearson, oboe d’amore along with the string ensemble Simone founded and directs, Baroklyn. Recorded with producer Silas Brown, the album also includes composer Philip Lasser’s continuo realizations and recomposition of Bach’s Air on the G String. The Washington Post comments, “it is Dinnerstein’s unreserved identification with every note she plays that makes her performance so spellbinding.” In a world where music is everywhere, she hopes that it can still be transformative. For more information, please visit www.simonedinnerstein.com.
About Alexis Pia Gerlach: Cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach has been lauded by the press for the "gripping emotion" and "powerful artistry" of her interpretations; qualities which have led to a career striking for its wide range of artistic collaborations. She has appeared extensively in recitals and as a soloist with orchestras across the United States, as well as in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and South America, with such conductors as Mstislav Rostropovich, James DePreist and Peter Oundjian. Her recording with pianist Fabio Bidini of the Franck and Rachmaninoff Sonatas is released on the Encore Performance label. As a sought-after chamber musician she performs at major festivals including Marlboro, Aspen, Bridgehampton, La Musica di Asolo and Caramoor, where she is a Texaco Rising Star, and as a guest artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. She has played extensively with Musicians from Marlboro, on both national and international tours. As a founding member of Concertante, a string sextet based in New York City, Gerlach performs on major concert series throughout North America, and has toured Asia and the Middle East. Concertante’s recordings of the string sextet repertoire have been met with critical acclaim.
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