JEREMY DENK is an American classical pianist born on this date in Durham, North Carolina. Denk has won a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, the Avery Fisher Prize, and Musical America’s Instrumentalist of the Year award, and 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 Billboard‘s Classical Chart.
One of his New Yorker contributions, “Every Good Boy Does Fine” (cf. EGBDF), forms the basis of a recently published book 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.
Mr. Denk grew up in Las Cruces, N.M., one of two brothers, a son of music-loving nonmusician parents. His father, who has a doctorate in chemistry, has been (at different times) a Roman Catholic monk and a director of computer science at New Mexico State University.
Mr. Denk admits to being “addicted” to the chili peppers of Las Cruces. He is quoted, seemingly only half joking: “The red and the green and the whole spirituality of chili peppers. It’s still a huge part of my life. When I go home I go to this real dive and obsess over their green meat burrito.”
When not on tour, Mr. Denk spends time with his boyfriend, Patrick Posey, a saxophonist and the director of orchestral activities and planning at Juilliard, where Mr. Denk received his doctorate, studying with Herbert Stessin.