Jeremy Denk

Jeremy Denk
In Montréal, Québec, Canada, at the MBAM Bourgie Hall
Born (1970-05-16) May 16, 1970 (age 56)
Durham, North Carolina, U.S.
OccupationClassical pianist

Jeremy Denk (born May 16, 1970) is an American pianist. He was awarded a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship in 2013, won the Avery Fisher Prize in 2014, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016.

Early life

Denk was born in 1970 in Durham, North Carolina. He did not come from a musical family. After several years in New Jersey, his family settled in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he grew up. He attended Oberlin College and graduate school at Indiana University Bloomington, where he studied with György Sebők. He also attended the Juilliard School.

Career

Denk has performed throughout the US and Europe in recital and with major symphony orchestras and has toured with Academy of St Martin in the Fields.

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 Billboard's Classical Chart. He won Musical America's Instrumentalist of the Year award.

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 Classical Style, with music by Steven Stucky. 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. His New York Times-bestselling memoir "Every Good Boy Does Fine" published by Random House in the US, and Macmillan in the UK, expands on an essay first published in the New Yorker in 2013.

His original blog, Think Denk, recounts his experiences of touring, performing, and practicing, and was selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress web archives. In 2024, he resumed his blogging on the Substack platform, entitled Denk Again.

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.

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.

He lives in New York City.

Recordings

Bibliography

A partial list of Denk's writings includes:

References

  1. ↑ "Jeremy Denk – MacArthur Foundation". Macfound.org. Retrieved September 30, 2013.
  2. ↑ "Academy Member Connection". Amacad.org. Archived from the original on March 26, 2018.
  3. ↑ Denk, Jeremy. Every Good Boy Does Fine; A Love Story in Music Lessons, Random House: 2022.
  4. 1 2 "Oberlin Conservatory | Oberlin in New York 2013 Illumination Tour". 2.oberlin.edu.
  5. 1 2 "Jeremy Denk". Opus3artists.com.
  6. ↑ "Jeremy Denk, Pianist". Jeremydenk.net. Archived from the original on January 15, 2012.
  7. ↑ "For the Love of Brahms". Academy of St Martin in the Fields.
  8. ↑ "Jeremy Denk's Recording of Bach's "Goldberg" Variations Lands at #1 on Billboard Classical Chart". Nonesuch Records. October 28, 2013.
  9. ↑ "Instrumentalist of the Year". Musicalamerica.com.
  10. ↑ "2014 Festival". Archived from the original on February 23, 2012. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  11. ↑ Alex, Ross (October 22, 2007). "A Critic at Large – The Well-tempered Web". The New Yorker. New York: Condé Nast, Advance Publications. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  12. ↑ Jeremy Denk (February 6, 2012). "Flight of the Concord". The New Yorker. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  13. ↑ Jeremy Denk (April 15, 2012). "Earth Music: The Great Animal Orchestra by Bernie Krause". The New York Times. Retrieved April 15, 2012.
  14. ↑ "Jeremy Denk, Pianist | Jeremy Denk Signs Book Deal with Random House". jeremydenk.net. Archived from the original on January 11, 2014.
  15. ↑ Think Denk It's a pun: "denk" is German for "think".
  16. ↑ "Ligeti/Beethoven: Piano Études; Sonata No 32 – review". TheGuardian.com. May 12, 2012.
  17. ↑ Tom Huizenga (January 31, 2019). "Jeremy Denk Maps Centuries of Music History on 'c.1300-c.2000'". NPR. Retrieved March 17, 2019.
  18. ↑ Presenter: Stig Abell; Producer: Hannah Robins (March 26, 2019). "A history of classical music in ten minutes - plus tragedy on today's stage". Front Row. BBC. BBC Radio 4. Retrieved March 28, 2019.
  19. ↑ "Jeremy Denk". Edinburgh International Festival. May 21, 2019. Retrieved May 22, 2019.