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“An artist you want to hear no matter what he performs.”

The New York Times

“The most viscerally ­exciting, ­emotionally ­absorbing and ­intellectually rich ­account of Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto that I have ever heard in ­concert.”

Detroit Free Press

“One measure of how fully he is able to draw the listener into his own ­feeling of ­renewed discovery when playing the “Goldbergs” was how quietly and ­attentively the audience took in all 70 minutes of this opening recital of the Symphony ­Center Presents Piano Series, ­before breaking into sustained applause.”

Chicago Tribune

“American pianist Jeremy Denk has both – not to mention the fiendish technique and expressive iconoclasm you’d expect from one of today’s classical superstars.”

Guardian

“While touching on a vast range of moods, colors, and characteristics, Denk’s Bach across the length of the recital was unified by its richness of inner life. One had the feeling less of attending a performance than of listening in on a pianist playing, in the best sense, for himself.”

The Boston Globe

“With impish charm, he performed this ­grandest of Mozart concertos with light-hearted ­irreverence. Each note sounded fresh and alive, as if thought through anew…”

Washington Post

“An unerring sense of the music’s dramatic ­structure and a great actor’s intuition for ­timing, Denk was the provocateur who urged his ­colleagues to dare all, to unleash every calorie of emotional heat.”

Boston Globe

“As the antihero keyboard soloist, Denk’s poised luminous touch in the spare solo part was an ideal partner for the scrupulously detailed and laser-like orchestral playing led by Tilson Thomas.”

The Miami Herald

“What caught the ear most was the sensitive, spontaneous phrasing and the pearly quality of his tone when spinning out melodic lines.”

The ­Baltimore Sun

“In Bach’s English Suite No. 3, his jazzy ­tempos and crisp articulation brought fresh ­perspectives to the Prelude, Courante and ­Gavotte.”

South Florida Classical Review

“Denk is one of the finest pianists we’ve heard: clear, nuanced, sensitive to the orchestra he’s with — or the partner…Denk is that rare pianist who can produce volume without beating up his instrument.”

Naples Daily News

Jeremy Denk is one of America’s foremost pianists, proclaimed by the New York Times ‘a pianist you want to hear no matter what he performs.’ Denk is also a New York Times bestselling author, winner of both the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and the Avery Fisher Prize, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In the 2023-24 season, Denk premieres a new concerto written for him by Anna Clyne, co-commissioned and performed by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra led by Fabio Luisi, the City of Birmingham Symphony led by Kazuki Yamada, and the New Jersey Symphony led by Markus Stenz. He also returns to London’s Wigmore Hall for a three-concert residency, performing Bach’s Solo Partitas, as well as collaborating with the Danish String Quartet, and performing works by Charles Ives with violinist Maria Wloszczowska. He further reunites with Krzysztof Urbański to perform with the Antwerp Symphony and again with the Danish String Quartet in Copenhagen at their festival Series of Four.

In the US, he performs a program focusing on female composers, and continues his exploration of Bach with multiple performances of the Partitas. His collaborations include performances with violinist Maria Wloszczowska in Philadelphia and New York, and, in the Summer, returning to perform with his longtime collaborators Steven Isserlis and Joshua Bell. He closes the season with the San Diego Symphony and Rafael Payare with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4.

Denk is also known for his original and insightful writing on music, which Alex Ross praises for its “arresting sensitivity and wit.” His New York Times Bestselling memoir, Every Good Boy Does Fine was published to universal acclaim by Random House in 2022, with features on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR’s Fresh Air, The New York Times, and The Guardian. Denk also wrote the libretto for a comic opera presented by Carnegie Hall, Cal Performances, and the Aspen Festival, and his writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New Republic, The Guardian, Süddeutsche Zeitung and on the front page of the New York Times Book Review.

Denk has performed multiple times at Carnegie Hall and in recent years has worked with such orchestras as Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, and Cleveland Orchestra. Further afield, he has performed multiple times at the BBC Proms and Klavierfestival Ruhr, and appeared in such halls as the Köln Philharmonie, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and Boulez Saal in Berlin. He has also performed extensively across the UK, including recently with the London Philharmonic, Bournemouth Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and play-directing the Britten Sinfonia. Last season’s highlights include his performance of the Well-Tempered Klavier Book 1 at the Barbican in London, and performances of John Adams’ “Must the Devil Have All The Great Tunes?” with the Cleveland Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, and Seattle Symphony, as well as a return to the San Francisco Symphony to perform Messiaen under Esa Pekka Salonen.

Denk’s latest album of Mozart piano concertos was released in 2021 on Nonesuch Records. The album, deemed “urgent and essential” by BBC Radio 3. His recording of the Goldberg Variations for Nonesuch Records reached No. 1 on the Billboard Classical Charts, and his recording of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Op. 111 paired with Ligeti’s Études was named one of the best discs of the year by the New Yorker, NPR, and the Washington Post, while his account of the Beethoven sonata was selected by BBC Radio 3’s Building a Library as the best available version recorded on modern piano.

AUGUST 2023