No Gravity and Simone Dinnerstein

This difficult sonata is rarely played. It’s coming to a KC concert hall, with a twist.

Kansas City Star
Patrick Neas
January 26, 2024

Charles Ives’ “Concord” Piano Sonata is one of the most brilliant works of American classical music. But with a length of almost an hour and demanding music for both pianist and audience, it’s not exactly a concert hall staple.

I still kick myself for missing local pianist Robert Pherigo’s performance of the “Concord” Sonata a few years ago. I thought I’d never have a chance to hear it live again.

Mirabile dictu, the Harriman-Jewell Series will present pianist Simone Dinnerstein with “The Eye Is the First Circle,” her multimedia conception of the “Concord” Sonata, on Feb. 3 at the Folly Theater.

The four movements of the sonata are meditations on New England transcendentalist writers: Emerson, Hawthorne, the Alcotts and Thoreau. Dinnerstein has taken Ives’ highly personal music to tell her own story.

“The whole program is a work of devised theater,” Dinnerstein said. “I wanted to explore the idea of how we come to be ourselves, what forms us. What things do we take from our surroundings and what shapes us to be artists.”

Read the full article here.

NO GRAVITY

In addition to the New England transcendentalist poets, the Harriman-Jewell series is also giving us a taste of Dante this week. The series will take us from the Inferno to Paradise when the Italian dance ensemble No Gravity performs “Divine Comedy” Jan. 31 at the Folly Theater.

Emiliano Pellisari, No Gravity’s choreographer, is steeped in Renaissance art and stage design, which has informed his conception of “Divine Comedy.” With a Felliniesque sensibility and jaw-dropping aerial arts, this promises to be a Cirque du Soleil-like take on Dante’s medieval epic.

The transcendental poets and Dante in the same week, Harriman-Jewell Series? Now you’re just showing off.

Read the full article here.