Biography

JEREMY DENK is one of America’s foremost pianists. Winner of a MacArthur Fellowship and the Avery Fisher Prize, he was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Mr. Denk returns frequently to Carnegie Hall and in recent seasons has appeared with the Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Cleveland Orchestra, as well as on tour with Academy of St Martin in the Fields, and at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in 2006.

Mr. Denk is also known for his original and insightful writing on music which has appeared in the New Yorker, the New Republic, the Guardian, and on the front page of the New York Times Book Review.

His recording of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations for Nonesuch Records reached No. 1 on the Billboard Classical Charts. His recording of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Opus 111 paired with György Ligeti’s Études was named one of the best discs of the year by the New Yorker, NPR, and the Washington Post. Mr. Denk has a long-standing attachment to the music of American visionary Charles Ives, and his recording of Ives’s two piano sonatas also featured in many “best of the year” lists. His recording c.1300-c.2000 was released in 2018 with music ranging from Guillaume de Machaut, Gilles Binchois, and Carlo Gesualdo to Karlheinz Stockhausen, György Ligeti, and Philip Glass. He can also be heard in Henry Cowell’s Piano Concerto with the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas on the American Mavericks recording on SFS Media, and in SoundBox: Delirium, a program he curated on SFSymphony+.

Jeremy Denk is a graduate of Oberlin College, Indiana University, and the Juilliard School. He lives in New York City.