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Jeremy Denk
American pianist Jeremy Denk has steadily built a name as one of today’s most compelling young artists, with an unusually broad repertoire.
He 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 Dallas Symphony, and the Houston Symphony. This season he appeared for the third time with the San Francisco Symphony, replacing an ailing Itzhak Perlman and performing Beethoven’s 1st Concerto. He appears often in recital in New York, Washington, Boston, and Philadelphia. He was an artist-in-residence at the 2008 Gilmore Keyboard Festival, and this season gives a recital tour pairing the Ives “Concord” Sonata and Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier,” culminating in a solo recital debut presented by Carnegie Hall. He gives four performances in New York and in Boston, and appears during the season in recital and with orchestra in cities from Florida to Colorado, and from Houston to Buffalo.
At the Spoleto festival 2004, Mr. Denk met and first performed with violinist Joshua Bell, whose subsequent invitation to do a recital tour resulted in a continuing musical partnership. A Philadelphia reviewer noted their “equal partnership, with no upstaging.” He and Mr. Bell recorded the Corigliano Violin Sonata for Sony Classical.
Mr. Denk maintains working relationships with a number of living composers, and has participated in many premieres: Jake Heggie’s concerto “Cut Time”; Libby Larsen’s “Collage: Boogie;” Kevin Putz’s “Alternating Current,” Ned Rorem’s “The Unquestioned Answer.” In 2002, he recorded Tobias Picker’s Second Piano Concerto with the Moscow Philharmonic. He has worked closely with composer Leon Kirchner on many of his recent compositions, recording finally his Sonata No. 2 (2001). This season he performs works by György Ligeti, Elliott Carter, Morton Feldman, Thomas Adès, and Charles Ives.
Mr. Denk has always been an avid chamber musician. He has collaborated with many of the world’s finest string quartets, has appeared at both the Italian and the American Spoleto Festivals, the Santa Fe and Seattle Chamber Music Festivals, and the Verbier Festival. Jeremy Denk has spent several summers at the Marlboro Music School and Festival in Vermont and been part of “Musicians from Marlboro” national tours.
Mr. Denk maintains a widely-read blog, entitled “Think Denk.” It has been praised by colleagues and the music press alike, and records some of his touring, practicing, and otherwise unrelated experiences, as well as delving into fairly detailed musical analyses and essays. Numerous arts blogs link to his, and Think Denk was cited by the music critic of the New Yorker, who called him a “superb musician who writes with arresting sensitivity and wit.” Moreover: “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.” Numerous reviewers have noted Mr. Denk’s urge for freshness and rethinking in his musical interpretations (as well as in the blog). “Mr. Denk is the ideal interpreter for music that defies easy classification,” wrote a critic for the Richmond Times, and the critic of the New York Sun called his “Waldstein” Sonata a “Radical Take on a Revolutionary Work.” The Washington Post referred to “Brilliant Playing at the Edge of Schumann’s Sanity.”
After graduating from Oberlin College and Conservatory in piano and chemistry, Mr. 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 website and blog are at jeremydenk.net.