Jeremy Denk


Jeremy Denk is an American classical pianist.

Life

Jeremy Denk is an acclaimed pianist. Winner of a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship, the Avery Fisher Prize, and Musical America's Instrumentalist of the Year award, Denk has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Denk returns frequently to Carnegie Hall and has performed with the Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, and Cleveland Orchestra, as well as on tour with Academy of St Martin in the Fields.
Denk has toured extensively throughout the US, including returning to the National Symphony Orchestra led by Sir Mark Elder, and performing with the St. Louis, Vancouver, and Milwaukee Symphonies. He has also toured the UK, including appearances in Perth, Southampton, the Bath Festival, and a return to Wigmore Hall. He has also appeared with the Britten Sinfonia, and made his debut at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Philharmonie in Cologne, and Klavier-Festival Ruhr, and continues to appear extensively on tour in recital throughout the US, including Chicago, Washington, Boston, San Francisco, Miami, Philadelphia, and at New York's Lincoln Center's White Light Festival in a special program that included a journey through seven centuries of Western music.
Denk's releases from Nonesuch Records include the opera The Classical Style with music by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. He joined his long-time musical partners, Joshua Bell and Steven Isserlis, in a recording of Brahms' Trio in B-major. His previous disc of the Goldberg Variations reached number one on Billboards Classical Chart.
In 2014 Denk served as music director of the Ojai Music Festival, for which, besides performing and curating, he wrote the libretto for a comic opera. The opera was later presented by Carnegie Hall and the Aspen Festival. Denk is known for his original and insightful writing on music, which Alex Ross praises for its "arresting sensitivity and wit." His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Guardian, and on the front page of The New York Times Book Review. One of his New Yorker contributions, "Every Good Boy Does Fine", forms the basis of a book for future publication by Random House in the US, and Macmillan in the UK. Recounting his experiences of touring, performing, and practicing, his blog, Think Denk, was recently selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress web archives.
In 2012, Denk made his Nonesuch debut with a pairing of masterpieces old and new: Beethoven's final Piano Sonata No. 32, Op. 111, and Ligeti's Études. The album was named one of the best of 2012 by The New Yorker, NPR, and The Washington Post, and Denk's account of the Beethoven sonata was selected by BBC Radio 3's Building a Library as the best available version recorded on modern piano. Denk has a long-standing attachment to the music of American visionary Charles Ives, and his recording of Ives's two piano sonatas featured in many "best of the year" lists.
Denk graduated from Oberlin College, Indiana University, and the Juilliard School. He lives in New York City.
In 2019, Denk released an album entitled c.1300–c.2000, of piano versions of pieces by composers from circa the years 1300 to 2000. The album was released on Nonesuch Records. He discussed the work on BBC Radio 4's Front Row'' in March 2019.
Denk made his Edinburgh International Festival debut in August 2019 with a programme of piano works by Bach, Ligeti, Liszt, Berg and Schumann.

Recordings