May 27: GRAMMY-Nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein & Baroklyn Perform at the Library of Congress for 100th Anniversary of Concert Series
Photo of Simone Dinnerstein and Baroklyn by Grayson Dantzic available in high resolution here.
GRAMMY®-Nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein and Baroklyn with Mezzo-Soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano and Oboist Katherine Needleman
Presented by Library of Congress
Performing Music from Dinnerstein and Baroklyn’s Bach Album Complicité
Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Concerts from the Library of Congress
Wednesday, May 27, 2026 at 8pm (reschedule from October 29, 2025)
Thomas Jefferson Building - Coolidge Auditorium
10 1st Street SE | Washington D.C.
Tickets & Information
Complicité is Out Now on Supertrain Records
PLUS Dinnerstein and Baroklyn’s New Philip Glass Album Hourglass Out June 5
Review downloads & CDs available upon request.
Simone Dinnerstein: www.simonedinnerstein.com
New York, NY – On Wednesday, May 27, 2026 at 8pm, GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein – described by The New York Times as “colorful and idiosyncratic” – performs with Baroklyn, the string ensemble she founded and directs, in music from their 2025 Bach album Complicité. Presented by Library of Congress in the Thomas Jefferson Building - Coolidge Auditorium (10 1st Street SE) Washington D.C., the concert also features mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano and oboist Katherine Needleman with Dinnerstein and Baroklyn. There will be a pre-concert conversation: Let the People Hear It: Concerts from the Library of Congress at 100, as well as a book talk with co-authors Nicholas A. Brown-Cáceres and David H. Plylar, PhD, at 6:30pm in the Whittall Pavilion.
Simone Dinnerstein is well known for her distinctive musical voice and for her expressive performances of music by J.S. Bach. She first came to wider public attention in 2007 through her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, reflecting an aesthetic that was both deeply rooted in the score and profoundly idiosyncratic. She is, wrote The New York Times, “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.”
This May 27 performance commemorates the centennial anniversary of Concerts from the Library of Congress, in the historic Coolidge Auditorium. In celebration of the milestone, Dinnerstein will begin the concert program performing a solo piano arrangement of Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr, the same chorale that opened the LOC’s concert series in October 1925, when it was performed on the organ. A special letter to organist Lynnwood Farnam (the first musician to play in the Coolidge Auditorium) describes an approach to programming that is very similar to Dinnerstein’s – thinking of a concert feeling like a "service" (as it's put in the letter), with one piece continuing into the next without applause. Dinnerstein and Baroklyn’s performance thoughtfully connects the concert series’ past with the present.
The concert also features music from Complicité, including Dinnerstein and Baroklyn’s arrangement of Bach’s chorale Herr Gott, nun schleuß den Himmel auf, BWV 617; Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in E Major, BWV 1053; J.S. Bach: Der Leib war in der Erden, BWV 161 (arr. Simone Dinnerstein and Baroklyn); Bach’s Cantata 170, Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust with continuo realization by Philip Lasser; and In the Air, Lasser’s recomposition of Bach’s Air on the G String.
Letter from the Library of Congress
written by Music Division Chief Carl Engel
The deeply felt recording has been warmly-received by listeners – Complicité has already been streamed over 1 million times. Gramophone describes Dinnerstein’s performance as “full of life, engagement and detail.” Of the new album, Textura writes: “Not only are the performances terrific, the music impresses for being more than faithful replications of existing scores but instead arresting re-imaginings that take Bach's pieces into dynamic new realms.” Read the album press release here and listen here.
Dinnerstein says of her group Baroklyn, “Baroklyn is a group of string players which I lead from the piano. We’re a community that shares the artistic vision that is most important to me, that music should be creative and new. Rehearsal is important to us, and I’ve been influenced by theater practice in which we listen to each other and pass musical ideas and phrases within the group. We rehearse and perform in a semi-circle around the piano and I rearrange parts to emphasize lines, voices and imitative qualities to create a sense of dialogue.” The ensemble’s name is a portmanteau of Baroque and Brooklyn, Dinnerstein’s home borough.
On June 5, 2026, shortly after this performance at the Library of Congress, Dinnerstein releases her next album with Baroklyn, Hourglass –– her first album on naïve since signing with the label earlier this year. The new recording features Philip Glass’s Suite from The Hours and his Tirol Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (Piano Concerto No. 1) and is another milestone in her close artistic association with the renowned composer, who celebrates his 90th birthday in January 2027. The first single, The Hours, is out now –– listen here. Read the album press release here.
More about Simone Dinnerstein: 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. Complicité (Supertrain Records, 2025) features Dinnerstein with Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo-soprano and Peggy Pearson, oboe d’amore along with 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.
In recent years, Dinnerstein has created projects that express her broad musical interests. She gave the world premiere of The Eye Is the First Circle at Montclair State University, the first multi-media production she conceived, created, and directed, which uses as source materials her father Simon Dinnerstein’s painting The Fulbright Triptych and Charles Ives’s Concord Sonata. She premiered Richard Danielpour’s An American Mosaic, a tribute to those affected by the pandemic, in a performance on multiple pianos throughout Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Following her recording, Mozart in Havana, she brought the Havana Lyceum Orchestra from Cuba to the U.S. for the first time, performing eleven concerts. Philip Glass composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 for her, co-commissioned by twelve orchestras. Working with Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet, she premiered André Previn and Tom Stoppard’s Penelope at the Tanglewood, Ravinia and Aspen music festivals, and performed it at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and presented by LA Opera and the Cleveland Orchestra.
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.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, is presented in concert with mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano, oboist Katherine Needleman, and Baroklyn – the string ensemble Dinnerstein founded and directs – by the Library of Congress. The performance will open with an arrangement of Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr, the same chorale that opened the Library of Congress’s concert series in October 1925, commemorating the centennial anniversary of the series. The program will also feature music by J.S. Bach and Philip Lasser from Complicité, Dinnerstein and Baroklyn’s 2025 Bach album.
Concert details:
Who: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein with Baroklyn, Mezzo-Soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano, and Oboist Katherine Needleman
Presented by the Library of Congress
What: Music from Dinnerstein’s Bach album Complicité and an arrangement of Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr, celebrating the centennial anniversary of the LOC’s Concert Series
When: Wednesday, May 27, 2026 at 8pm
Where: Thomas Jefferson Building - Coolidge Auditorium (LJG45E), 10 1st Street SE, Washington, DC 20540
Tickets and Information: https://www.loc.gov/item/event-417408/simone-dinnerstein-jennifer-johnson-cano-katherine-needleman-and-baroklyn/2026-05-27/