Jeremy Denk, piano

“A pianist you want to hear no matter what he performs” (The New York Times), Jeremy Denk returns to Berkeley with an artfully curated recital of American-inspired music paired with canonic works by Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert. Denk is known for bringing fresh perspective to a staggering range of repertoire, from medieval to contemporary. Two works here celebrate Black American vernacular composers whose music rarely gets its due on concert stages: “Blind Tom” Wiggins’ The Battle of Manassas and Scott Joplin and Louis Chauvin’s Heliotrope Bouquet. British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s They Will Not Lend Me a Child reflects his interest in Black American spirituals; and Frederic Rzewski’s “Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues” is a movement from his Four North American Ballads, based on American folk and protest songs.

This performance is made possible, in part, by Jeffrey MacKie-Mason and Janet Netz