Pianist Jeremy Denk to Perform at 92NY in December

The 92nd Street Y will present the Jeremy Denk, piano on Thursday, December 12, 2024 at 7:30pm ET on the David Geffen Stage at Kaufmann Concert Hall and streaming online. Tickets start at $25 and are available now.

MacArthur "genius" grant recipient and longtime 92NY favorite Jeremy Denk returns with a characteristically bold and thoughtful new program, culminating in Ives' Transcendentalist piano masterwork.

Denk writes, "This year marks the 150th birthday of Charles Ives-one of the wildest imaginations of American music," calling his "Concord" "a sonata like no other-by turns craggily dissonant, witty, haunting, and disarmingly simple. We begin with Emerson's desire to take on the universe, pass through Louisa May Alcott's more innocent truths on the spinet, and end with Thoreau's surrender to nature." About the concert's first half, he writes, "To flesh out the portrait, we hear from Ives' hero Beethoven. Two of Beethoven's most philosophical, probing sonatas frame a suite of jazz, ragtime, and popular song - from Joplin to Nina Simone ... Charles Ives didn't just want to mix popular and classical music. He wanted to erase the distinction, to see how various traditions and musics share the same spark and get after the same truths."

The complete program will feature:

BEETHOVEN Piano Sonata No. 27 in E Minor, Op. 90

Scott Joplin Bethena

GOTTSCHALK The Banjo

Jule Styne "Just in Time" (arr. Ethan Iverson, after Nina Simone)

BOLCOM The Poltergeist Rag, from Three Ghost Rags

BEETHOVEN Piano Sonata No. 31 in A-flat Major, Op. 110

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IVES Piano Sonata No. 2, "Concord, Mass., 1840-60"

Jeremy Denk is one of America's foremost pianists, proclaimed by The New York Times as "a pianist you want to hear no matter what he performs." He is the recipient of both the MacArthur 'Genius' Fellowship and the Avery Fisher Prize and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In the 2024/25 season, Denk performs at the Tsindali Festival and Wigmore Hall with Joshua Bell and Steven Isserlis, following his residency at the Wigmore in 2023/24. He also returns to the Lammermuir Festival in multiple performances, including the complete Ives violin sonatas with Maria Włoszczowska, and a solo recital featuring works of female composers. He performs this program on a US tour, while continuing his exploration of Bach in performances of the complete Partitas. Nonesuch Records will release a collection of Denk's recordings of the music of Charles Ives in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth.

Denk has performed frequently at Carnegie Hall, and in recent years has worked with such orchestras as Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and San Francisco Symphony. He has performed multiple times at the BBC Proms and Klavierfestival Ruhr, and appeared in such halls as the Köln Philharmonie, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and Boulez Saal in Berlin. He has also performed across the UK, with the London Philharmonic, Bournemouth Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, and Scottish Chamber orchestras.

Denk is known for his insightful writing on music, which Alex Ross praises for its "arresting sensitivity and wit." His New York Times bestselling memoir, Every Good Boy Does Fine, was featured on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR's Fresh Air, The New York Times, and The Guardian. Denk wrote the libretto for a comic opera presented by Carnegie Hall, Cal Performances, and the Aspen Festival, and his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, TheNew Republic, The Guardian, Süddeutsche Zeitung and The New York Times Book Review.

Denk's album of Mozart concertos, released in 2021, was deemed "urgent and essential" by BBC Radio 3. His recording of the Goldberg Variations reached No. 1 on the Billboard Classical Charts, and his recording of Beethoven and Ligeti was named one of the best discs of the year by The New Yorker, NPR, and The Washington Post, while his account of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111 was selected by BBC Radio 3's Building a Library as the best available recording on the modern piano.

For more information, please visit www.jeremydenk.com.