Rory Macdonald
conductor

A dynamic presence in both the opera house and concert hall, Rory Macdonald’s conducting combines intellectual rigour with passionate engagement. With a notably wide repertoire from Dowland to MacMillan, his collegiate approach has led to many successful collaborations with leading artists and production teams.

Recent highlights include La Bohème for Glyndebourne, which resulted in an immediate re-invitation, as well as returns to Oper Frankfurt (Le Nozze di Figaro) and Opera Theater of Saint Louis (The Magic Flute). In the last few seasons, he has returned regularly to the Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and Tokyo City Philharmonic Orchestra, amongst others. Macdonald has made successful debuts with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, Romeo Castellucci’s staging of Requiem at the Adelaide Festival, and Peter Grimes at the Brisbane Festival.

Other recent symphonic engagements include the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, among others.

He has led many acclaimed productions of works by Britten, including new productions of Owen Wingrave and A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Royal Opera House; Albert Herring for Glyndebourne; The Turn of the Screw with Mark Padmore at the Vienna Konzerthaus; A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Lyric Opera of Chicago, and The Rape of Lucretia at Houston Grand Opera.

Rory’s discography includes Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy with Nicola Benedetti for Decca, as well as highly acclaimed discs for Hyperion, Chandos, and Linn Records. Two further discs are due for release later this year with the RSNO, including works by Anna Clyne and James MacMillan.

Rory studied music at Cambridge University. Whilst there, he studied under David Zinman and Jorma Panula at the American Academy of Conducting in Aspen. After graduating from Cambridge, he was appointed assistant conductor to Iván Fischer at the Budapest Festival Orchestra (2001-2003) and to Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé Orchestra (2006-2008). He was also a member of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House (2004-2006), where he worked closely with Sir Antonio Pappano on such major projects as the complete Ring cycle.

Simone Dinnerstein
piano

American pianist Simone Dinnerstein has a distinctive musical voice. The Washington Post has called her “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity.” 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.”

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 thirteen albums, all of which topped the Billboard charts. 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.

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 Piano Sonata No. 2. 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 different 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 and the Kennedy Center, presented by LA Opera.

Dinnerstein has also created her own ensemble, Baroklyn, which she directs. 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.