American pianist Jeremy Denk has steadily built a reputation as one of today’s most compelling and persuasive artists with an unusually broad repertoire.
Denk has appeared as soloist with many major orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the St. Louis Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the London Philharmonia, the New World Symphony, the Dallas Symphony, and the Houston Symphony. Last season he appeared for the third time with the San Francisco Symphony performing Beethoven’s First Concerto. He appears often in recital in New York, Washington, Boston, and Philadelphia.
...
read full bioAmerican pianist Jeremy Denk has steadily built a reputation as one of today’s most compelling and persuasive artists with an unusually broad repertoire.
Denk has appeared as soloist with many major orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the St. Louis Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the London Philharmonia, the New World Symphony, the Dallas Symphony, and the Houston Symphony. Last season he appeared for the third time with the San Francisco Symphony performing Beethoven’s First Concerto. He appears often in recital in New York, Washington, Boston, and Philadelphia.
During the 2009-10 season, Denk performs concertos by Beethoven, Chopin, Copland, Mozart, Rachmaninoff, and Schumann and makes debuts with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood, the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, and the Vail Valley Music Festival with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He plays a recital of Chopin and Schumann at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center and Washington’s Kennedy Center, and he collaborates with baritone Randall Scarlata in Schubert’s Winterreise in Florida and at Boston’s Gardner Museum. Denk will give master classes at the Manhattan School of Music and University of Washington, and he will perform Stravisnky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments with the London Symphony Orchestra and John Adams in London and Paris. He will also perform the Stravinsky as part of Carnegie Hall’s City Noir in Zankel Hall on May 10.
In 2004, Denk met and first performed with violinist Joshua Bell at the Spoleto festival and was invited on a recital tour, sparking off a musical partnership that continues today. They tour this season throughout the US, performing in Bethesda, Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and elsewhere. A Philadelphia reviewer noted their “equal partnership, with no upstaging.” They recorded Corigliano’s Violin Sonata for Sony Classical and tour together regularly.
Denk maintains working relationships with a number of living composers and has participated in many premieres, including Jake Heggie’s concerto Cut Time, Libby Larsen’s Collage: Boogie, Kevin Putz’s Alternating Current, and Ned Rorem’s The Unquestioned Answer. In 2002, he recorded Tobias Picker’s Second Piano Concerto with the Moscow Philharmonic. He also worked closely with composer Leon Kirchner on many of his recent compositions, recording his Sonata No. 2 in 2001. This season Denk performs works by György Ligeti, Elliott Carter, Morton Feldman, Thomas Adès, and Charles Ives.
Jeremy Denk is an avid chamber musician. He has collaborated with many of the world’s finest string quartets, has appeared at the Italian and American Spoleto Festivals, the Santa Fe and Seattle Chamber Music Festivals, and at the Verbier Festival. He has spent several summers at the Marlboro Music School and Festival in Vermont and been part of “Musicians from Marlboro” national tours.
The artist’s widely-read blog, “Think Denk”, has been praised by colleagues and the music press alike. There Denk writes about some of his touring, practicing, and otherwise unrelated experiences, as well as delving into fairly detailed musical analyses and essays. Alex Ross, the music critic of the New Yorker, described the pianist as “a superb musician who writes with arresting sensitivity and wit ... This is a voice that, effectively, could never have been heard before the advent of the Internet: sophisticated on the one hand, informal on the other, immediate in impact. Blogs such as this put a human face on an alien culture.”
Reviewers frequently comment on the freshness and originality in Denk’s musical interpretations (as well as in his blog). “Mr. Denk is the ideal interpreter for music that defies easy classification,” wrote the Richmond Times; the New York Sun called his “Waldstein” Sonata “a radical take on a revolutionary work”; and The Washington Post referred to his “brilliant playing at the edge of Schumann’s sanity.”
After graduating from Oberlin College and Conservatory in piano and chemistry, Denk earned a master’s degree in music from Indiana University as a pupil of György Sebök, and a doctorate in piano performance from the Juilliard School, where he worked with Herbert Stessin. He lives in New York City. Denk’s web site and blog are at http://jeremydenk.net
Last updated February 2010. Contact Opus 3 Artists for the most up-to-date version.
