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Jeremy Denk (born May 16, 1970 in Durham, North Carolina) is an American classical pianist and author of the memoir Every Good Boy Does Fine: A Love Story, in Music Lessons (2022).
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 charts.
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. Think Denk It's a pun: "" is German for "think". 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.
Denk graduated from Oberlin College, Indiana University School of Music, and the Juilliard School. He lives in New York City.
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, Franz Liszt, Alban Berg and Robert Schumann.
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