MOBILE, Ala. — Pianist Simone Dinnerstein returns to Mobile with Baroklyn, the string ensemble she founded in 2017, for a Mobile Chamber Music concert built around Bach. Separately, an art exhibition rooted in a family scrapbook opens in Midtown.
How Baroklyn Started
Dinnerstein founded the ensemble after Melissa Smith, director of Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, booked Dinnerstein’s then-experimental explorations with partners.
Dinnerstein assembled musicians she could direct while accompanying at the piano, settling on an 11-member unit who appear in various groupings. The Mobile show features a quartet of string players and a flutist alongside the pianist.
A Rehearsal Room Where Everyone Talks
“Everybody contributes at rehearsals,” Dinnerstein said. “They share good ideas and we try different approaches to playing, different bowing or lines. It is highly polyphonic.”
That collaborative method is helped by Dinnerstein’s standard approach to practice, in which she breaks pieces down to “separate voices.”
The group’s modest size aids the give and take more than it would with a 40-member orchestra, where time constraints limit input. Dinnerstein estimated that sometimes half of Baroklyn’s rehearsal explorations are discarded.
“Everybody is respected and trusted in their feedback during rehearsals,” Dinnerstein said. “I think everybody feels willing to go through that process together.”
Discarding half of what a rehearsal produces is a meaningful statistic. It indicates a process oriented toward genuine experimentation rather than refinement of a predetermined interpretation — an approach far more feasible with a dozen players than with a full orchestra on an hourly clock.
Two Pieces Arranged by the Performers
Two of the pieces in the Bach-filled Mobile program are arranged by the performers. Both were intended for other instrumentation.
“One is a choral prelude originally for organ, so we arranged the organ part for our ensemble,” Dinnerstein said. “The other piece is a chorale which would have just been sung.”
Arranging Bach for different forces has a long and entirely legitimate history — Bach himself routinely reworked his own material for whatever players were available. Transcribing an organ chorale prelude for strings and flute distributes across several instruments what one player managed with two hands and two feet, which can clarify the independent voices in a way the original texture sometimes obscures.
Glass and Bach, 300 Years Apart
Dinnerstein is not a stranger to contemporary sounds. The Recording Academy asked her and Baroklyn to perform in a special summer showcase live-streamed to academy voting members. They shared the bill with Brad Paisley and Olivia Rodrigo.
Baroklyn’s selection for the streaming event — Philip Glass’s “The Hours,” from the 2002 film of the same name — was relatively contemporary for the classical realm. It was not surprising, given that Dinnerstein and Baroklyn earned praise for “Hourglass,” their album of Glass works. One reviewer described it as “a refreshingly organic approach that allows these interpretations to breathe.”
Though Glass is notably contemporary, Dinnerstein sees a connection between the modern minimalist and the 300-year-old Baroque era.
“They’re both very polyphonic, both layered and layered,” Dinnerstein said.
The observation is musically substantive. Minimalism and Baroque counterpoint both build large structures from short repeating figures layered against one another, and both ask a listener to track several simultaneous lines rather than a single melody over accompaniment.
Tickets
Mobile Chamber Music concert tickets are $25.
The Grandmother Project
While looking through her late grandmother’s college scrapbook, Mary Elizabeth Kimbrough considered the glimpses it offered into a version of her grandmother she never knew — and realized how much of that woman had remained a mystery to her.
That recognition became the basis of The Grandmother Project, an art show opening in Midtown Mobile.
The premise touches something most people encounter eventually. A grandparent is known to a grandchild almost entirely in their final decades, in a single role. Photographs and documents from earlier decades present a person with ambitions, friendships and a social world that the family member never met.
Details on the exhibition’s hours and location are available through the venue.