Jeremy Denk

Jeremy Denk is one of America’s foremost pianists, hailed by the New York Times as “a pianist you want to hear no matter what he performs,” and celebrated for performances of vast imagination, beauty, profundity, and wit. Also a New York Times bestselling author, Denk is the recipient of both the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and the Avery Fisher Prize and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

During the 2026–27 season, Denk tours widely across North America as both a soloist and recitalist, with performances alongside frequent collaborators the Isidore Quartet and the Takács Quartet. Commemorating the bicentennial of Beethoven’s death, he performs the composer’s Piano Concerto No. 4 at Carnegie Hall with the New York String Orchestra, led by Michael Stern, and presents recitals at Vivo Performing Arts and Philadelphia Chamber Music Society centered around a selection of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. He also continues his longstanding relationship with Scotland’s Lammermuir Festival, where he performs Mozart’s second and third piano concertos, and collaborates with tenor Joshua Ellicott on Janáček’s The Diary of One Who Disappeared and Schubert’s Winterreise.

Last season, Denk’s recital programs explored the works of female composers from the past to the present, as well as the complete Bach partitas. He also returned to New York’s 92nd Street Y to perform Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and reunited with a long-time collaborator, Joshua Bell, for performances at the Hollywood Bowl and the Ravinia Festival. Later in the season, he embarked on a tour of South Korea with violist Richard O’Neill and performed in multiple concerts at the Adam Chamber Music Festival in New Zealand, including a performance of Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin with tenor Colin Ainsworth.

Denk appears frequently at Carnegie Hall and, in recent years, has worked with such orchestras as the Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and San Francisco Symphony, and at such halls as the Köln Philharmonie, Concertgebouw, Wigmore Hall, and Boulez Saal. Denk has also performed extensively across the UK, appearing with the Bournemouth Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony, London Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Britten Sinfonia, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and the Northern Sinfonia.

Denk is also celebrated for his original and insightful writings on music, which New Yorker critic Alex Ross praised for its “arresting sensitivity and wit.” His New York Times bestselling memoir Every Good Boy Does Fine was published to universal acclaim by Random House in 2022 and was featured on CBS Sunday Morning and NPR’s Fresh Air and in the New York Times and the Guardian. He also wrote the libretto for a comic opera presented by Carnegie Hall, the Aspen Festival, and here at Cal Performances, and his writing has appeared in the New Yorker, New Republic, Guardian, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and on the front page of the New York Times Book Review.

Denk is known for his interpretations of the music of American visionary Charles Ives, and in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth, Nonesuch Records released a collection of his Ives recordings in 2024. His album of Mozart piano concertos, released in 2021 on Nonesuch Records, was deemed “urgent and essential” by BBC Radio 3. His recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations for Nonesuch Records reached No. 1 on the Billboard classical chart, and his recording of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Op. 111 paired with Ligeti’s Études was named one of the best discs of the year by the New Yorker, NPR, and the Washington Post, while his account of the Beethoven sonata was selected by BBC Radio 3’s Building a Library as the best available version recorded on modern piano.